If you lined up all of the logos of the companies that the staff at Two Point Studios had previously worked at, you'd have one of the most nostalgic line-ups in video game history.
It's the amalgamation of creativity from studios like Bullfrog, Muckyfoot, and Lionhead, which retro gamers will recognise as the developers of games like Fable, Theme Hospital, Black and White, Theme Park, and Dungeon Keeper.
With that in mind it's not hard to be excited by the thought of anything they threaten to launch, but when you throw the success of Two Point Hospital into the mix, you're really onto something.
Two Point Hospital was a pun-heavy hospital management simulator released in 2018, which tasked you with treating patients sick from Cubism, Misery Guts, Freudian Lips, Lazy Bones, and a plethora of other hilarious made up diseases. All of this was done with a financial premise in mind - your hospital not only had to function, but it had to be profitable too.
Two Point Campus takes this concept and puts a spin on it, swapping the hospital management for university management. There's more to it than that though, since Two Point Campus adds layers of complexity and depth not seen in the previous title.
The concept of the game is relatively simple at its core. Build a university that teaches one or two subjects, and equip it with classrooms and teachers. Your students will then be able to learn the subject, and you'll be told how well they're doing. As they learn they gain exp, and they get better at their subject. This converts into monthly profit for the university.
Students are fussy however, and they won't get good grades based on the teaching alone. In order to maximise their grades, and therefore your profits, you'll need to make sure their basic needs are covered.
This means supplying dormitories, bathrooms, showers, a student lounge, and other places to keep them happy. Teachers need the same attention - forget to give them a teacher's lounge and you'll find your unhappy staff are about as much use as a chocolate teapot.
The year is split into 24 segments - that's 12 months split in half - with classes typically running for 30 days (2 segments). You can plan events for the gaps, which will increase your students happiness and also some other stats like movement speed, which obviously helps the overall efficiency of the fine establishment you've loving crafted.
At the end of the year, you get to see how your students did, and you get more Campus Points based on how your university is doing. Campus Points allow you to upgrade your courses or open new ones, meaning more students and more tuition fees. This gameplay loop then continues - new classes (or upgraded ones) need new buildings or items, which requires more money and staff.
Overall the concept is simple - happy staff and students equal more money and therefore more capacity to expand your university and teach more students and hire more staff.
It sounds simple, and that's because it is. It's a game that's easy to pick up and get into, but hard to master. Getting a functional university is easy - it's maximising the efficiency and the profit thats tricky.
Students and staff will nudge you in the right direction, dropping requests into your inbox for things they would like to see. It's up to you if you do this, but doing so usually awards with money and Kudosh, which lets you unlock new items to put in your school.
There are a tonne of layers to each segment of gameplay. Your students have needs which need to be seen to with things like dorms, bathrooms, and shower rooms, and you could supply fairly basic versions of these fairly easily. Someway through your first playthrough however, you realise that actually there's a better way to do it.
The rooms have minimum size requirements, and the game sort of tricks you into thinking this is how big they should be at first. In reality, bigger rooms mean they're more attractive, and you can fit more stuff in them. This leads to happier students - which as you're figuring out by now is the key to the game.
The same goes for classrooms and lecture halls, which can be much bigger than the game suggests, and are often more effective than the minimum sized versions.
Managing staff is another good example. In order to teach Scientography for example, you need a teacher who is skilled in Scientography. It's easy to open the menu and grab the first one, but if you look closely you realise each teacher has pros and cons, and some of them even have multiple proficiencies.
To add to this, you unlock the ability to train teachers in anything you want. Now you can take your Scientography teacher and get him into Robotics, or you can make him even better at Scientography. Which is better? The same applies to Janitors and Assistants, who all have skills, proficiencies, pros, and cons. Be careful though - improve your staff's quality too much and they'll start charging you more money.
You can also conduct research to improve your buildings and items. Again, there's choices to be made here - what do you research first? To add to the complexity, upgraded items cost money, just like improved members of staff.
Each level tends to focus on a particular course, and the game generally lets you move on when you achieve certain goals (such as a certain pass rate, or a certain university level). When you do this, you're awarded with one star, but each level has a set of objectives for 2-star and 3-star ratings. This adds a certain level of challenge and replayability - I found that reaching 1-star was relatively easy, but 3-star objectives were substantially harder and more time consuming.
There's also a sandbox mode, which is unlocked by progressing to a certain point in the game. This is a welcome addition for a lot of people, and lets you just crack on and build your dream university free of objective or direction.
Visually, the game is artistic and cartoony without looking to "indie". The characters are fun and often times silly, donning uniforms and outfits for their courses which are generally outright hysterical.
The soundtrack is a little monotonous and boring, however the tannoy announcements, advertisements, and radio hosts that pop up periodically really make it impossible to turn it off. Much like the rest of the game they're humourous, well thought out, and refreshingly varied.
The game is fleshed out with many small details that really add to it in a big way, even if they're not immediately noticeable. The course names are hilarious (things like Scientography, Funny Business, and Virtual Normality), and the character names even more so, which I won't spoil here.
The game is stacked full of puns and small details, even on the loading screens - the "loading" animation in the corner of the screen is a TV with a logo on it that bounces diagonally but never hits the corners, much like the old DVD player screensavers.
Verdict: 4/5
Two Point Campus makes building and running a university intuitive, fun, and satisfying. The game is hilarious, the concept is simple, but the simulation element is reasonably intricate, having you manage wages, happiness, and even temperature.
The game has multiple levels and a sandbox, with each level having 3 sets of objectives to complete (1-star, 2-star, and 3-star ratings), as well as a unique setting and theme.
That said, there are some elements of the game which are quite fiddly, in particular the camera controls and the way items are placed. There are also a handful of bugs and some quality of life issues, such as the amount of money required to build a room being incorrect in some cases or not taking into account essential items.
That said, Two Point Studios have a history of ironing out bugs and adding quality of life upgrades quickly and often, and I'm confident these bugs won't stick around for long, even if they make it to release.
On the whole, Two Point Campus is an addictive fun time sink, and is everything that Two Point Hospital was and more. I binged four levels in one sitting, and had to tear myself away from the game to write this. I just worry about how much replayability the game will have once all the levels are 3-starred (there's only really a handful), as the sandbox mode has the potential to feel quite empty.
If you like management games and simulators then this is, quite frankly, a must own.
Two Point Campus comes to PC, Playstation, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch on 9 August 2022.
