Preview: Hands on with Two Point Campus

When Two Point Studios formed and announced their first game Two Point Hospital, a lot of gamers were excited because this was a return to the sim games of the late 90s and early 2000s. The studio kept that game going, releasing new content even as recently as last month on PC, but while they were supporting that game, they were making Two Point Campus, and thanks to Sega we got to go hands on. 

While we only got to go hands on with the PC version of the game, we did get to ask about the Switch one in an interview – check that out here.

Two Point Campus is very different from what Hospital was, in that you actually have time to breathe and re-evaluate the direction your school is taking. If the games are performers, hospital is somebody juggling whilst on a unicycle, always in motion, unable can’t stop else they will fall down. Campus on the other hand is someone spinning plates, there is plenty of time for them to setup and once they are ready to start the show, things get chaotic. While maybe not the most common analogy, it provides some insight into how Campus starts off differently and then just paves its own path forward from there. The biggest change is that before the school year officially begins, players have time to build rooms, facilities, decorate them and even expand the school building, if they so choose. There is no time limit on this, so if you wanted to spend 20 minutes ensuring that your lecture hall is in the best place, you can do that, of course if the school, isn’t open then you are not making money and you can’t build forever.

This is another area that the game differs greatly from its predecessor, Hospital was all about someone walking in, being treated and then leaving, with the end result being that you got paid. Campus requires you to entertain everyone who attends the school, even if you pay them like teachers and support staff. To that end, you now have to deal with dormitories, toilets, showers, hang out spaces for both students and staff, along with classrooms and more. A lot of the aspects will feel familiar, so anyone who has sunk some time into Hospital will understand what the basics are, but now there are so many more layers to the game, that it will likely take a while to adapt, but the game does have some decent introduction, so you won’t be thrown into the deep end.

The build that Sega provided gave me access to the games first location, which is considered the tutorial level, things are pretty chill there, but in addition I was granted access to the second stage as well, where things really heat up and not because it offers an additional subject, that of cooking. Of course, anyone who has seen the trailers for the game, should be aware that building placement is now open to design, meaning that if you don’t like the shape of the building, you can remove it or expand it, in anyway you like. This is not something I made use of in my first year, because that was more about ensuring that the kids that were enrolled were attending class and getting a decent grade. Once the year ended, it was time to expand the campus and the courses offered, which is another aspect that you need to consider. Hospital would introduce new diseases, with some consistency, but here you decide on what courses are offered at your school, from science to technology, cooking to archaeology and more to be announced, the choices are yours to make.

The first stage was pretty forgiving on my layout, I didn’t mess with the building dimensions, but there was space for me to expand, which I did in my second year of running the school. What was interesting in the tutorial level was being told that someone wasn’t happy, which is another new thing to manage, because if the kids you are teaching, are not happy with what you are offering, they can leave, which means a few thousand dollars a month is lost. Some kids want additional outdoor facilities, some want more posters and art around the school and others want additional study desks in the library. Finding out what each wants is simple, as most will send you an email to let you know, but deploying the happiness map, which gives everyone a colour-coding, green being the best and the closer they shift to red, the more unhappy they are. Seeing a sea of green walking around is satisfying and after four years in the first school, I felt I was ready for a new challenge, how wrong I was.

The game didn’t hold back on its requirements for the second school, which focused on gastronomy, or in English, cooking and while you can think that a new subject is simple to deal with, the game added a lot more to the requirements for a successful school. The students now wanted clubs to join, hangouts to relax in, sports outside and more, what was a small handful of things to deal with in school one, exploded into many handfuls in the second school and I was not prepared. Where things really amped up in the challenge was that the default layout of the first building was just slightly to small, so I had to expand it out to fill in the space around it, but at the same time, couldn’t take away from the outdoor locations students and staff were enjoying. Let’s just say that my second school was not the smashing success that the first was, I ran out of money trying to be super cleaver before the first year even began, which meant I couldn’t put in items that were requested, which caused kids to start failing and then, I began to fail.

Sadly, it was after my second school that my time with the game came to an end and while it is always sad to end a preview of any game, given that I lost nearly 4 hours to it and still wanted to continue, is at least a sign that it was time well spent. There is a lot of familiar here from Hospital, but there is so much more going on, that even ardent players of that game, will find a challenge, at least at the start. How the final game shakes out is anyone’s guess, but so far, this is one game worth enrolling for.

Two Point Campus is out on 9th August, it was originally due out in May but a delay of three months was announced the same time as this preview.