Two Point Museum Review - You’ll want to spend more than one night at these museums

Two Point Museum is Two Point Studios' latest entry in its quirky simulation series, challenging players to manage multiple museums, keep visitors entertained, maintain employee happiness, and ensure financial stability—all while sending staff on automated expeditions to uncover the next big exhibit. While it doesn’t drastically alter the well-known formula, key refinements make this the best iteration of the series to date.

Thinking Outside the Rooms

Two Point Hospital reimagined developer Bullfrog’s Theme Hospital and Theme Park, while Two Point Campus expanded upon that foundation with a more creative toolset. The latter felt more relaxing, allowing players to design their schools freely, whereas Two Point Hospital leaned into efficiency and crisis management. Two Point Museum strikes a happy medium between the two, offering creative freedom while keeping a strong layer of challenge.

For the first time in the series, I didn’t always have to focus on optimizing rooms. Instead, the overall flow and aesthetics of my museum took center stage. I could create narrow corridors filled with exhibits, open spaces highlighting key attractions, or even make one-way pathways to control visitor movement. The introduction of a triangular floor-shaping tool allowed for more creative designs beyond simple square layouts.

Rooms still play an important role - cafeterias, gift shops, and employee rooms are still essential services, but staff-only doors and partition walls make it easier to separate workspaces from guest areas. It’s all about the flow in Two Point Museum, as it’s not about having each patient serviced, or having students performing at their best. The end goal is all about keeping each visitor around as long as possible, literally sucking as much as you can get out of them. 

To maximize efficiency, I had to make sure the visitors were never bored. This required me to carefully balance interesting exhibits, establish entertaining areas, and have basic needs within arm’s reach at all times. Fine-tuning each museum as more items unlocked became addicting. I never felt completely satisfied with my work, as I’d always find a better way to refine my layouts.

Those who keep things running

The core gameplay loop in Two Point Muesum is currently my favorite in the series. You display exhibits, generate revenue through donations and grants, manage gift shops, and send staff on expeditions to discover new artifacts or better versions of existing ones currently displayed. These are off-screen adventures that your staff goes on, as if they are living their own Indiana Jones adventure. At times, they will interrupt you to make a major decision to resolve a dilemma, such as whether they should walk through the frozen lake, or around it? These decisions will either negatively or positively affect the rest of the expedition, but mainly your staff will return with a crate containing one of the items you can find in that particular location, and at times they’ll take on the occasional negative effect due to the trip. 

Expedition rewards are randomized, which are akin to opening a loot box. Initially, when I participated in the game’s preview event a few months back, I was worried that later expeditions would contain overwhelming item pools, making collection frustrating. Thankfully, most locations at most can contain around four possible items, ensuring steady progress instead of a repetitive grind. Farming higher-quality versions of existing exhibits is mostly optional unless required for specific tasks or completionists aiming for a fully-optimized museum.

Playing Two Point Museum showed me that Two Point Studios has learned to improve the series’ creativity while also ramping up the challenges that push players outside of their comfort zones through forced changes. The only stagnation in this series is in its personality and presentation. The quirky humor, once a standout feature, has lost its novelty after three games. The wacky, unrealistic exhibits don’t stand out as much anymore, and the in-game music is largely forgettable - I muted it halfway through and played my own Spotify playlist instead. Even the iconic DJ and announcer failed to deliver memorable lines, and I fear their charm peaked in Two Point Hospital, as I was already feeling it wane while playing Two Point Campus.

The right sense of progression

Two Point Museum starts small and slowly builds up into a complex operation with multiple layers running simultaneously. Each campaign stage focuses on a distinct museum theme – don’t expect multiple stages featuring the same prehistoric setting. Instead, the game tasks you with revisiting previous museums to grow and improve them with the new features and items introduced in later maps. 

The campaign map consists of stages that are meant to evolve and grow over time. As new mechanics and rooms were introduced, I had to redesign entire museums multiple times. For example, my earlier layouts lacked cafeterias, since they weren’t initially available. Later, I had to rethink my whole design to replace my pocket food sections filled with vending machines and stalls with a large cafeteria to serve as the main source of food for visitors and staff. 

Two Point Museum can be a timesink. At one point, I spent an hour on pause, carefully planning my museum’s new layout without realizing how much time had passed. It wasn’t a chore, but an engrossing process, one that led to my playing until 3AM without noticing.

Staff still play a crucial role in Two Point Museum. There are four types of staff, and each category grows in responsibilities over time. It’s a steady climb in difficulty when it comes to staff management, as assistants start with mainly manning ticket booths to eventually being responsible for handling cafeterias, coffee stalls, and even marketing campaigns to promote your museum. Security guards are responsible for collecting donations from visitors while keeping thieves at bay from either ruining or stealing your exhibits, while janitors are not only there to keep things tidy, but they are also responsible for building items to make certain expeditions easier, and constructing attractions to keep visitors entertained. Professors are the backbone of every museum, as they come with various specialties, ranging from prehistoric exhibits, marine life, the afterlife, and even outer space.

Variety is another strong point of Two Point Museum. Museums range from prehistoric fossil displays to marine exhibits with fully customizable aquariums. You can showcase ghostly apparitions, cultivate plant life, or even create intergalactic exhibitions with interactive elements. Each theme introduces unique mechanics that make progression more engaging, especially with the newly-introduced star rating system.

This time around, achieving higher star ratings provides more value than in previous games. Tasks push players to rethink previous designs entirely, and the challenge escalates, especially when you start finding yourself managing museums with multiple themes at once. Each theme keeps growing, and expedition maps keep branching out. 

Even after 30 hours of playtime, I haven’t fully unlocked every area in each expedition map, and am still working on my first map of the game - I redesigned it three times, and am aiming to get it to a 4-star rating (yes, Museum goes beyond 3 stars).

I felt challenged in every corner, trying to complete each task given to me, and each star rating earned felt like a true accomplishment, with the cherry on top being unlocking new sets of ways to design your museum.

The best iteration yet 

Despite its aging personality, Two Point Museum is the strongest entry in the series yet. The improved gameplay flow, deeper simulation mechanics, and museum theme provide just the right level of creative freedom and challenge. While I wish the series’ humor and presentation had evolved more, Two Point Museum delivers enough refinement to keep longtime fans engaged and eager to perfect their museums in both campaign and sandbox modes.

---

Verdict: 4.5 / 5 (Fantastic)

PROS

• The best gameplay flow in the series yet, perfectly suited for the museum theme

• Greater freedom in designing layouts beyond just room placement

• The star rating system adds meaningful progression and replayability

• Wide variety of museum themes, each with unique mechanics

CONS

• The DJ and announcer lack the charm of previous titles

• The music and quirky aesthetic are starting to lose their appeal

What I’ve Played 

• Reached 2-star in all museums, earned 3-star in the starting two maps

• Over 30 hours of playtime

*This review is based on a Steam review copy provided to the reviewer

---