Upcoming Sega game Two Point Campus is the sequel to the critically-acclaimed management sim Two Point Hospital, and aims to add depth to the previous title’s gameplay by expanding upon the series’ mechanics. Screen Rant was given beta access to the first four levels of the game, which will officially release August 9. Although not the final version of the game, the first four levels of Two Point Campus set the stage for a game that manages to perfectly blend humor with serious strategy. All the features of Two Point Hospital, including those added post-release such as Sandbox Mode, are all present from the start with Two Point Campus, alongside a slew of new ways to help make your school the best it can be.
The general concept of Two Point Campus is very similar to that of Two Point Hospital, including many of the main tropes of the simulation game genre. Each level of the game features a different campus with its own theme, course focus, and needs. Players must keep their campus financially afloat while ensuring students have their needs met and are passing their classes. The campus will require a large amount of different facilities to keep students and staff happy: they’ll need a bathroom, shower room, and access to food and drink for their basic needs, as well as rooms to meet their social and study needs like a library, student lounge, and special classrooms for different majors.
A key part of the Two Point series is its sense of humor, and the campus setting lends itself to all sorts of new silliness. In Two Point Hospital, a lot of the video game’s humor was derived from the ailments of the patients, coming down with things like Mood Poisoning and Lightheadedness, which would replace the patient’s head with a giant lightbulb. This time around, the majors and the classes they require bring the laughs, with different majors like Scientography and Funny Business and courses with titles like “Cheese and Firecrackers: A Lit-Mouse Test” and “Trip Then Fall: VR Health & Safety.” Each course – as well as many other campus buildings – come with large and ridiculous machines or other items associated with them, like a machine that produces giant burgers for the Gastronomy major and a Jousting Field required for those in Knight School.
Two Point Campus puts a much greater emphasis on interpersonal relationships and mental wellbeing than its predecessor. While players did have to be mindful of employee energy and happiness in Two Point Hospital as is typical of most management sims, players mainly had to worry about the competence of their staff and their abilities to cure diseases. Now those elements are still in place but with new requirements and the added component of doing the same for students. Sometimes players will need to do things like send failing students to private tutoring to stop them from failing, but other times it’s more complex issues that need to be dealt with. A student may have stellar grades but be unhappy due to a lack meaningful friendships or romance, which players will need to facilitate with items meant for social growth like benches and romantic dinner tables or by throwing events like school movie nights and parties.
Two Point Campus offers players a huge amount of depth when it comes to management mechanics, and lets players micromanage to their heart’s content. Both students and staff have various Sims 4-style traits and moodlets that impact their behavior: they may get a happiness boost from being outside in the nice weather or finishing an assignment, and have traits that make their hunger increase faster or their movement slower. Teachers also have credentials alongside their traits which allow them to perform different tasks and improve their efficiency in different ways. All of these elements must all be carefully considered during hiring – some may cost less per year but have worse traits or qualifications. The entire campus can be viewed through a variety of different filters that function as a sort of heat map to monitor things like the attractiveness of the campus and maintenance levels, as well as the needs of individuals like hunger and energy.
A campus layout and the way items are placed play a key role in Two Point Campus gameplay, but not in the way interior design works in many simulation games – it’s not about aesthetics but rather efficiency and stats. Of course, that’s not to say players can’t also make their campus look nice, but the main focus is on things like how the campus can be laid out in the most efficient way for student access, have its rooms’ prestige levels improved by decor, and feature items that can offer things like boosted learning rates. Useful new items can be unlocked using a currency called Kudosh, which is earned through completing achievements and raising the star-level of the school through the completion of various different requirements, such as an 80% attractiveness rating campus-wide or student body B average.
Two Point Campus gives players a myriad of different ways to improve their school from year to year. Each academic year, players can expand the courses the school offers or level up existing ones – things like this will increase the campus level, attracting a higher quality of staff applicants and larger student body. However, in typical tycoon-game fashion this will lead to more salaries that must be paid and new facilities required of the campus, meaning players must delicately balance expansion and the ability to stay afloat financially. Players can improve the qualifications of their staff and traits of their students as well – staff members can level up their qualifications through a special staff training machine, and clubs started around campus like a Bookworm Club or Speed Walking Club can improve student learning and speed.
Upcoming Sega offering Two Point Campus more than lives up to the hype it’s generated since it first leaked in spring 2021, combining all the beloved elements of Two Point Hospital with fun new twists and lots of silly surprises that are sure to delight fans of the series and the management simulation genre as a whole. A player’s management style can be as detailed as they’d like, but in a way that makes the game still feel accessible to newcomers. Although it’s unknown what the final version of the game will contain, the first four levels demonstrate that the development team has listened to its fans when it comes to creating Two Point Campus.
Two Point Campus will release August 9th for PC, Mac, Nintendo Switch, PS4/PS5, and Xbox One/Series S/Series X. Screen Rant attended a preview for the purpose of this article.
