Two Point Campus Preview: A Fresh, Magical Spin on a Deeply Addictive Sim

The first computer game I ever bought with my own money as a preteen is still the game that I play most frequently as a grown woman in my 30s. Without exception, it's the only game that continues to hold my attention for endless hours at a time in spite of more than two decades of technological progress. 

Its name is Two Point Hospital.

If you know your simulators, you'll probably be aware that Two Point Hospital only came out in 2018. But if you know this, you'll also know that the game is the spiritual successor to the 1997 game Theme Hospital, which I would play late into the night on our family desktop PC. The two share more than an uncanny resemblance.

Not only does Two Point mimic the business management and the design mechanics of medical establishments that were pioneered in Theme Hospital by developer Bullfrog, but it also shares its sense of humor – goofy names, improbably stupid diseases and farce-worthy scripting. It's a formula that's kept me hooked for 20-plus years.

Only now, in 2022, does a worthy challenger for my affections approach, cut from the same cloth (and developed by the same studio). We are now less than three months away from the long-awaited (by me) release of Two Point Campus, which is coming to Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S on Aug. 9. (It costs $40/£35 but is coming to Xbox Game Pass on day one).

The aim of Two Point Campus is simple. You must build and manage university campuses, moving up through levels with different challenges as you acquire new courses and new strategies for herding lazy students towards graduation. Naturally, the students don't learn anything as dull as "math" or "law." Instead, your professors will be teaching them how to become wizards, knights and spies.

When the game was first announced in 2021, I felt that in some ways the folks at Two Point Studios were doing me a personal favor by developing a game at the intersection of two of my most fervent cultural passions: silly business management sims and campus novels/coming-of-age stories. Needless to say, I am the target market for this game and was thrilled when I was given the opportunity to preview it this week.

As a seasoned Two Point Hospital pro, it took me little time to get to grips with the basic mechanics of the game, leaving me free to focus on crafting my perfect library and figuring out how to host a party in the student union. I was still grateful that the game allowed me to choose when to start the school year, though, so that students didn't start arriving on campus before I'd had a chance to build them any shower rooms.

What struck me immediately is how much effort has gone into theming the different levels on Two Point Campus. While there is some theming of the different levels on Two Point Hospital (different diseases and heating/air conditioning requirements for various climates), it sometimes feels like an afterthought. 

This new game takes the theme for each level much more seriously, making the few levels I played feel more distinctive from one another. In Piazza Lanatra, for example, where the main course on offer is gastronomy, immense effort has been put into making the level look architecturally like a quaint historical European city center.

But don't think serious theming means serious gameplay. Two Point Studios' latest game is as silly as ever, and thank goodness for that. It helps that most of the people you're managing and trying to keep happy at your universities are just a bunch of dumb college kids who think it's funny to get naked in public while wearing a knight's helmet.

One of my favorite aspects of Two Point Hospital has always been laying out the floor plans by moving the rooms around like Tetris to try to create a logical path for patients as they progress through the hospital without wasting space. There's fresh delight to be found in Two Point Campus now that you must incorporate spaces for living, partying and studying. Learning how best to zone these within and between buildings is something I nerdily look forward to getting the hang of.

There are various ways in which Two Point Campus introduces novelty into the tried and tested formula, most immediately noticeable is the ability to landscape the grounds – including placing snack kiosks (coffee! hot dogs! ramen!) outside of buildings. Now when you expand your empire by buying a new plot of land, you don't even have to place a building on it. You can instead plant trees for students to loll under or place love benches on the lawns for romantic coffee dates.

On that note, the introduction of romance and friendship in Two Point Campus is something I didn't fully get to grips with in my short playing time. In Two Point Hospital our petulant patients don't interact with each other that much and have a tendency to be a little self-centered if anything. (OK! We get it, you have a lightbulb for a head. But you still have to join the queue if you want to be seen by a doctor.)

But in Two Point Campus, students can form friendships and even romantic relationships, which affect their happiness. Giving them spaces to socialize, such as a lounge and student union, as well as creating clubs for them to attend seems to be a nurturing force in these relationships. The second I had enough kudosh (currency you earn for completing challenges) I unlocked a special double bed decorated with hearts and put it in its own separate dorm. I think it's pretty clear what I intend this room to be used for, but as far as I could tell it was treated as simply another dorm room by the students who were randomly assigned to sleep there.

To what extent I, as chaotic-evil master of this tiny pixelated universe, am able to manipulate these relationships is still unclear to me at this stage. But I would like to. If I cannot, it's possible I might see this as a limitation of the game, although it's the only one I came across in my short time playing Two Point Campus.

One other minor problem – if you could call it that – is one I've also experienced in the past while playing Two Point Campus' predecessors. That is, when I begin to play I slip into a zen, hyper-fixated state of time blindness, where hours simply disintegrate and the notion of bedtime doesn't occur, even as I watch my students snoozing peacefully in their dorms.

It's the highest compliment that I can give the game when I say that in the days since my preview code expired, I've been in a constant cycle of feeling drawn to play more, followed by a melancholic listlessness when I realize I can't.

Perhaps that's for the best. Now that I know what awaits me, I have time to get my affairs in order before August when a new all-encompassing role as a university administrator, campus designer and (potentially) student matchmaker beckons.