Two Point Campus is a laid-back management sim with an art style straight out of a Dreamworks animation. It's a light-hearted strategy game that tasks you with developing a thriving university filled with colorful characters, tongue-in-cheek lectures, and wide-eyed students.
But for me, it's an exercise in miserable ambition. After spending a few hours with the introductory level and the first main mission of Two Point Campus, my thirst for exploitative work practices knows no bounds. My addiction to unscrupulous business management has no limits. I am ready to unleash all my parsimonious cunning on the poor students and staff unfortunate enough to populate this digital university.
Two Point Campus may look like a management sim as cheery as the smiles of the characters in its manga, but there is a black hole at the center of this market sim. And it does terrible things to a person.
a familiar face
If you've played Two Point Hospital, or delved into classics like Theme Park World, Theme Hospital, or Roller Coaster Tycoon, this sequel will feel familiar. In Two Point Campus, you are entrusted with the grounds of a burgeoning university to become a college powerhouse.
This primarily involves the design of the architectural interiors of the buildings through the construction of classrooms, lecture halls and accommodation for incoming students. You must equip each room with the necessary instructional materials, while hiring staff and developing additional classes to attract potential enrollees. You need to build more than just classrooms for your students to thrive (I mean keep paying your exorbitant fees): they need libraries to exercise their aspiring minds and places to socialize. Also, like a living room where they can practice their pickup games.
Must give students all the bells and whistles of a Hollywood college experience
You can't just create the university of your choice; there are rules to follow and expectations to manage. In the missions I played, the main goal was to increase and maintain the grades of my enrolled students. Upgrading your university's academic facilities is the most straightforward way to do this, whether it's by hiring better staff or giving the library a little more money to buy fancy new computer desks.
But students are not clients and their academic performance is linked to their social environment. There is no point in creating an illustrious, state-of-the-art lecture hall if the students using it sleep in cramped quarters with nothing but a single potted plant for comfort. You will have to provide them with all the comforts of a Hollywood college experience if they are to remain happy. If you don't, they could leave, taking your precious license plate with them.
Equilibrio
It's a good way to tie Two Point Campus's simulation mechanics together with its more artistic design elements. While many management sims include visual customization options that are little more than cosmetic options, Two Point Campus incorporates them into its victory conditions, which often include increasing a cohort's academic scores.
For a well-functioning campus, you'll need to dot the food outlets, make room for student societies to hang out, and fill the student union with enough arcade machines to keep everyone happy. Students also love flower beds, which are a good excuse to play dress-up as architects.
It is not easy to run a school that works while it is empty inside
It may seem utopian to you, but it seems expensive to me. Call me Scrooge, but I'm the kind of college administrator who stuffs twenty students into a room and gives them a single potted plant for comfort. There is nothing I love more than seeing how far I can push my students and staff before they reach their breaking point, carefully selling off (supposedly) essential university assets and providing meager teaching facilities to inflate my coffers.
I sold all the college food stores to save on rent costs, replacing every cafeteria and burger van with a vending machine. I laid off a large portion of my already underpaid cleaning staff to replace them with trash cans, hoping that the good nature of my students would keep the campus clean (it doesn't, but they can live on their own disorder). I reduced personal tutoring rooms. to one square meter tuition boxes, how much space can individual tutoring need?
My cost cutting really wasn't worth it. The immediate savings did not translate into lasting benefits, as my struggling campus was struggling to attract new students. It is not easy to run a school that works while it is empty inside. But that only makes things more enjoyable. It's a challenge trying to be as stingy as possible while having a successful college. Like setting a trap, but not wanting to spend too much money on the bait.
cabinet results
My quest for unlimited earnings exposed some weaknesses of Two Point Campus. There are hacked methods to increase student happiness, such as throwing a big end-of-the-year party. The events provide enough happiness to get students through the year, no matter how bad the campus gets. Plus, you can keep teachers from quitting by filling staff break rooms with an unrealistic number of cheap plant pots. These may be realistic metrics, but I felt like I was cheating the game instead of playing the way the developers intended.
But these are only minor flaws. Designing your campus with exciting new decorations and features is so quick and easy that my desire for inflated profits led me to commit to Two Point Campus systems and take on the role of a dime-seeking administrator.
I can't wait for more students to sign up later in the year, with their inflated bank accounts ready to be plundered.
Two Point Campus does a fantastic job of letting you go from micromanaging your university (carefully choosing every poster posted in the student union) to playing with the macro-financial aspect: assessing whether that extra library assistant really does their job. With the entire game structured around the annual academic cycle, he has a break during the summer months to get away from the spontaneous problems of the students and the disagreements of the staff to focus on the broader side of the business.
Two Point Campus may seem like a light-hearted management sim that captures the best days of college life, but I enjoyed it more when I played a part in the greedier parts of higher education. I can't wait for more students to sign up later in the year, with their inflated bank accounts ready to be plundered.