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The Bullfroggy connected universe that is Two Point County continues to expand with the announcement of Two Point Museum, another irreverent management sim from developers Two Point Studios. This one’s about museums, would you believe, with exhibition themes including the world of prehistory. Find a trailer propped below this paragraph like a freshly brushed-down Tugowaurus skeleton.
The basics appear to be as in the previous two games: you build an attractive, labyrinthine space in order to fulfil the needs and demands of people passing through, so as to earn cash. The theming is played for laughs, but there’s a relentless metrics-sating machine rattling away beneath. Individual relics you might display include dinosaurs that must be assembled fossil by fossil, primeval stone computers, and giant ice cubes containing not-entirely-dead cavemen. Each exhibit generates Buzz, depending on how well you’ve arranged the pieces, which translates to more donations from visitors, who range from meddling school children to furtive artefact thieves.
In terms of how it differs from previous Two Point management sims, here are some nuggets of precious amber excavated from Eurogamer’s preview. Firstly, building is no longer constricted by rooms: instead, you’ll use partition walls, archways, floor materials, lighting types and decorations to structure and define each part of your museum. Hmm, I wonder if I can build another Toilet Maze? That was my finest achievement in the previous Two Point Campus, which Ed enjoyed. Such a shame that Two Point’s in-game sense of humour doesn’t extend to having NPC bladders explode.
You’ll obtain new musuem artefacts by sending out fossil hunters and tomb raiders to explore a gradually revealed world map. You’ll also need these experts to keep the exhibits kempt and well-maintained once installed. Exhibits can also be “levelled up” through research to increase their earning potential.
At the risk of yet again sounding like a killjoy: it’s a mildly temperamental time to reveal a museum sim, in the UK at least. There’s an on-going muddy reckoning in our cultural sector with the fact that many prized UK museum exhibits are pillaged goods that should perhaps be returned to the descendants of the people we stole them from. With its comedy popsicle Bigfoots and literal lavalamps, Two Point Museum (which you can find on Steam) isn’t really trying or equipped to join that conversation. I’m not sure how the developers could go about it – the difficulty is with the concept of museums and archives in general. If you’d like to dig into such things, I recommend Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s recent polemical tome Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism.