Two Point Museum does not care whether I have to make dinner or not. Like so many other titles in the genre, this management sim churns forward, upward, and onward until the end of time — or until burglars start stealing money from your donation bin because you forgot to give the security guards a raise. Thieves are one of the game’s many natural challenges, along with museum exhibits becoming dusty, guests getting hungry, and trash accumulating on the floor.
The newest installment in the wildly popular franchise from Two Point Studios, Two Point Museum slots beautifully into the lineup. Museums are particular and specialized, like the hospitals in Two Point Hospital, and they attract peculiar and specific types of guests, like in Two Point Campus. In this game, which will be released on March 4, your most important employees are your experts, like archeologists and “science experts.” These experts can go on expeditions and bring back exhibits to display in your museum; having varied and updated exhibits pleases guests who then donate cash, buy souvenirs, or eat food.
The drive to make your museum pleasing is high, as each exhibit performs better when you surround it with decor — my floppy disk fossil has a prehistoric plant and a few rocks nearby. Even when you succeed at making an amazing museum that you’re happy with, the game rolls onward — you can start another museum with a new focus, like the supernatural or space. You can mix various exhibit types into one building, or spread your exhibits out over an entire campus.
It all sounds very nice and expansive, and at first it is. But eventually, I couldn’t help but wonder what I was doing all of this for. The payoff is rarely worth it. Maybe you unlock a new section of the expedition map or, even better, set up a new type of exhibit, after hours of grinding through leveling up your museum — but that new territory ultimately leads you back into the same repetitive loop: level up, max out, unlock, repeat.
With this in mind, I did crush 20 hours of this game within about 10 days of getting access to the review build I played, and I had no idea it had been that much time until my husband made a guess and I ran to my computer to prove him wrong. He was not. That is part of the push and pull of all of the Two Point games, though, and management sim games in general — the game is inherently not respectful of your time.
And I did get addicted to the high of seeing double green upward arrows next to the current amount in my coffers. I was delighted for a time with the game’s signature puns and jokes, and the yeti characters that randomly came into my museum (hailing from a Two Point Hospital DLC). I started to feel less enraptured by the game when I left it running while I walked my dog, just to earn some extra cash — after which I got distracted, forgot about the game, and watched an episode of Severance. I found the game still running two hours later (I’m sorry, I swear I usually turn my computer off), and I had become disgustingly rich, with massive coffers that kept compounding regardless of dissatisfied staff and too few bathrooms for my growing customer base. The game didn’t even need me there to fine-tune the balance of my establishment as it grew — so why had I just sunk 20 hours into it?
I haven’t spent enough time with Two Point Museum to say how much play fans will get out of it, but I imagine it’ll become another title that players could spend 200 or more hours playing. I wish the game offered more breathing room for playing around in both campaign mode and in sandbox mode, and I yearn for more customizability within the aesthetics of the museums. But at $30, it’s an excellent value proposition for a management sim lover or a dedicated Two Point fan. I’d just set a timer so you don’t forget to stand up every six hours or so.
Two Point Museum will be released March 4 on PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on PC using a pre-release download code provided by Two Point Studios. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
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