Visitors want an educational, entertaining, clean and attractive museum with an adequate snack-to-piss pipeline.
Staff want training, nice sofas, and good pay.
It is stuffed to bursting.
There is melted cheese coming out of its nose and it barely notices because it rarely breathes.
Like its Tommy Gun drum of dad jokes, it’s all very endearing despite eliciting some massive groans.
They’re the sort of groans you do after smashing overrich fondue.
Most exhibits are single-use plonkables you dig up by sending your staff on expeditions.
More so than money, which buys you neither love nor deck chair plants.
I love the space for emergent yarns here but the expeditions smear on the jammy micromanagement thick.
So: I’m back at my first museum trying to get a third star.
Maxing out one location tends to teach you the nuances.
To get that star, I need to first unlock 14 expedition spots on the bone belt map.
Which I can obviously do by just exiting the level and opening sandbox mode.
You’re the rope.
They bear the load of my heavy heart and I love them dearly for how transformative they are.
They’re joined by partition ropes, one-way gates and staff-only doors.
Now, you could funnel guests and architect beautifully complex buildings at the same time.
you’re able to make damn well sure they exit through the gift shop.
Those gift shops are just one added layer of thoughtful simulation.
There are dozens of little details like this.
I notice goths turning up in the museum.
They’re too stoic to care about entertainment or other such frippery, but they’re very into knowledge.
Visitors have personal ambitions for their dream day out and the goths frequently want to get turned into vampires.
I have no idea what this means until I excavate blood-sucking bat plants that do just that.
There are even several genres of criminal.
I’m left impressed by Two Point Museum more than I actually enjoyed playing it.
But I also think it should have slammed the breaks on shoving in so many new, granular systems.
It makes the game feel sludgier and more calculated and tiresome than its novel and bright coating deserves.
“Nice bit of cheese” you think, your environmental satisfaction rising as you pass.
I smile, but do not fool yourself.
I am not smiling because you’re happy.
I am smiling because the numbers went up.
