As someone who didn’t get the opportunity of a tertiary education I’m probably the last person that should be handed the keys to an entire university, but I’m a sucker for a good management sim and with Two Point Campus arriving in August this year I was excited to be able to spend a couple hours with the game to see what it’s all about. Following up 2018’s excellent Two Point Hospital, this game allows players to try their hand at building and running a campus of their own with the goal to give their cohort of fresh-faced, dew-eyed students the very best years of their lives.
I’ll admit that going in I was slightly sceptical about how the facilitation of higher education would work as a management sim in Two Point Campus. The usual genre suspects like theme parks, zoos and hospitals work because they fit into a very typical business model where better performance means more customers and more profit. At a university campus, on the other hand, it’s the customers that must perform in order to generate more revenue and it’s less about attracting more of them than it is retaining and developing the ones you have. Two Point Studios is approaching this game with that exact challenge in mind though, and once I started to understand its systems and how they differ from what I’m used to in similar titles it all started to fall into place.
Before I even got my hands on any of this the team at Two Point gave me a run down on what their vision is for Two Point Campus and the biggest takeaway for me was that every player’s experience and the results of their hard work will look vastly different based on the courses they decide to offer. Each new region that players unlock will also bring with it new course types to offer, but players are still free to mix and match their campus’s specialties as they see fit. Want to open a school strictly in the field of archaeology? Do it. Rather diversify and add in a little gastronomy and… knighthood? Sure thing! The only thing that matters is your students leave their university experience better and brighter than when they entered.
For the purposes of this preview I had access to two levels from Two Point Campus’s core campaign, starring with a good ol’ fashioned college orientation. The tutorial level set in sunny Freshleigh Meadows started me off with the bones of a basic university campus and slowly took me through everything from building rooms and facilities to balancing my slate of courses, hiring and managing staff and generally just overseeing the vibe.
Two Point Campus’s core gameplay loop is essentially structured around the academic year. With each new ’round’ you’ll have as much time as you want to prepare your campus, setting up the courses you’ll be offering, decorating, hiring staff and generally doing what you can to ensure the time ahead is the best it can be for your students once you hit the button to start the year. Once things kick off it’s more than just sitting back and watching it all fall into place though. You’ll need to manage every aspect of your campus to ensure that things run smoothly with problems promptly corrected and opportunities fully explored, increasing your funding as well as achieving goals to mark the success of your university.
The measure of success at your campus, much like in most management sims, is of course money. But since running a university is more about long-term funding than simple transactions the aim is to manage both your students’ wellbeing as well as their results. Keeping them happy and engaged is important for retention and also means they’ll generally do better in your school’s courses, which in turn means more school fees banked with which to expand your operation even further. One of the earliest lessons learned in this first scenario is ensuring your students and faculty have access to facilities that keep them comfortable and entertained. Building dormitories, staff and student lounges and basic amenities is crucial, and the more time and money you invest into these the better your university will perform.
There are a ton of different menus and measures to check up on how things are going at your university and how individuals are progressing, and while in these early stages I didn’t go digging too deeply I’m sure that micro-management maestros will find plenty to chew on when it comes to the nitty-gritty of things. Luckily for the rest of us, students are pretty good at flagging when their needs aren’t being met or when there are things you can do to improve their lives on campus which spoke much more to me and my touchy-feely side than the business stuff. It’s oddly heart-warming, watching your students go through their education and learning not just academically but personally, form relationships and really just getting prepared for the lives ahead of them when they finally graduate.
The second level available to me in the game’s campaign was set in the capital of cuisine, Piazza Lanatra, where I was able to diversify my fields of education with the Gastronomy course. It’s here that I was also opened up to a few more of the ways that players can improve the university experience with things like on-campus events. Scheduling cook-off competitions with rival schools, opening student clubs and providing social spaces all helped to further improve my students’ lives and in turn their results. I still managed to fail my students at times though, which led to the need to create spaces and jobs for tutors to lift up any flagging individuals. Between general upkeep, event management and offering support it started to become clear that running a campus wasn’t going to be easy, but at least it was always thoroughly entertaining.
It was in this scenario that I was most reminded of Two Point Hospital’s tongue-in-cheek approach to its subject matter and nothing’s changed here with Campus. The university experience is presented with a mix of very silly, very dry and British wit that riffs on the very idealised view of higher education in films and TV. It’s also incredibly over-the-top and whimsical when it comes to how courses and fields of study are portrayed, likely evidenced by a lot of what you’ve seen in trailers with history students parading around as knights, ‘scientography’ majors blowing things up in giant mechanical cauldrons and on-campus parties overflowing with kegs of ‘soda pop’. It’s brimming with personality and a world of difference from the banality of actual study and the more clinical trappings of other management sims.
One of the things that stood out to me the most in my short few hours with Two Point Campus is how much more scope there is for customisation and freedom of expression in your facilities compared to Two Point Hospital. Your campuses will come with a general layout and design to help you get started but you’re free from the get-go to tear them down and build them up the way you want. If creativity over curriculum is more your style you can really get down and focus on putting together a beautiful campus, decorating it with items, unlocking and changing wallpapers and flooring, even choosing new looks for your staff and students. There’s obviously strategic value in ensuring your school’s layout has form and function too, making it even more rewarding to lock down your landscaping.
As much fun as I was having once I’d settled into college life there were a few pain points that threatened to test my patience more than the curriculum called for. Even this early in the game I started to find myself overwhelmed by the plates I was spinning during the school year and struggling to pick through the tasks at hand to find what I should be prioritising. I’m sure that given more time I’d find my rhythm, but it would’ve been helpful had the game given me just a touch more clarity around where my efforts were falling short in growing my University Level or keeping my students satisfied with their facilities. I also found that object placement could be quite finicky when it came to snapping things into place or trying to resize rooms that already had objects inside of them, but hopefully minor things like this are ironed out before release.
Overall though I’m super keen to play more and see what other course types Two Point Campus has up its sleeves in other regions, as well as how the challenge balances out after more time with the game. Two Point Studios is trying something different in the management sim space and from what little I’ve played I reckon it’s paying off. I might not have had the campus experience in reality, but at least I can make sure these adorable little human sponges soak up as much knowledge and ‘soda pop’ as they can during the best years of their virtual lives.
Two Point Campus is coming to PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC on August 9, 2022.
Amazon has the physical Enrolment Edition for $59 with free shipping.
