Two Point Museum brings a little adventure to the franchise | Hands-on preview

One thing I learned from my hands-on time with Two Point Museum is that a good museum thrives or fails on the merits of its staff. While previous instalments in SEGA’s excellent “Two Point” franchise, Hospital and Campus, have focused heavily on caring for visitors to your facility, either patients or students, Two Point Museum is more about hiring the right people for the right job. This in turn leads to the museum doing a better job educating and servicing its visitors, allowing it to grow.

At the centre of this mechanic are Expeditions. While it’s essential to provide facilities for your guests and customers, the primary mission here is to generate “Buzz”, and Buzz comes from getting all your visitors, young or old, excited about history. This means placing exhibits, of course, which require upkeep and necessitate the employment of Janitors – but first you need to secure them, and that means you need Experts.

Experts are hired to do one main thing: undertake Expeditions to the darkest corners of the world and return with priceless artefacts to display. Some of these artefacts take multiple Expeditions to gather, and you’ll never be quite sure what you’re getting until your helicopter returns with a big box to unpack. But with every foray into the wilderness comes dangers, and outfitting and training your Experts beforehand is essential.

The more interesting your displays, the more Knowledge your guests will acquire, which leads them to donate more money to the Museum, spend in the gift shop and, most of all, spread the Buzz to bring in more guests. Immediately, Two Point Museum seems less complex than either of its predecessors, which themselves presented pretty easy-to-access management experiences. Museum feels less like you have anything to juggle, though, and the simple act of placing your relics and information boards brings instant gratification in the form of more Buzz.

Placing decorations in the right places can drive up Buzz, as well as giving your patrons access to information in interesting ways. Children, for example, will benefit from big, colourful interactive displays, which cost a large sum but are always worth the investment.

Of course, while you’re managing Expeditions to far off reaches and making sure there are enough choccies in the vending machine, you’ll also be responsible for creating themes by changing up the wallpaper and floor coverings, and maintaining your staff happiness. They’ll need facilities to unwind and work out of, and you can get into the nitty gritty of training them and deciding their pay.

The preview build presented three levels, all of which focused on gaining and displaying different attractions. While there will be a creative mode in the full game, the campaign puts the onus on achieving specific objectives. The first level is all about prehistory, and sees you collecting and displaying fossils, dinosaur skeletons, and lots of botanical décor. Level two, on the other hand, is more focused on sea life and marine history. The third and final mission of the beta gets spookier, with creepy artefacts and ghostly supernatural history. There’s a lot of variety in just these three missions which bodes very well for the eventual full release – and the nature of level three suggests the full game might go to some pretty unexpected places.

One of my favourite elements was building teams for the Expeditions, some of which are particularly dangerous (imagine sending a handful of employees to the actual Netherworld, for example). Further to the Expeditions themselves is the issue of caring for the things they bring back. You can’t just dump a frozen exhibit in the middle of an exhibition stand, after all; you’ll need to maintain freezing temperatures. Some of the marine life you display also has specific needs to manage, all of which works towards that all-important Buzz. Oh, and in level three, failure to manage certain exhibits will result in some pretty terrifying encounters for your guests.

On top of everything else, it looks absolutely lovely, with the series’ trademark bright, cartoony visuals bringing it all to life. It’s also very accessible, with simple controls and easy item placement, and objectives that are straightforward while still making you work a little to tick them off. There’s something about Two Point Museum that feels more laidback than previous instalments, yet I was never bored or at a loss for something to do, something to tweak, or somewhere to send my teams of intrepid explorers. It’s too early to say with certainty, but I’m pretty confident that Two Point Museum is about to add another success to Two Point Studios’ record.

Two Point Museum is developed by Two Point Studios and published by SEGA. It is  scheduled for release on March 4 2025 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox.