Try to score more than two points in Two Point Campus

It’s safe to say that very few people dream of becoming a university administrator. After all, what does a university administrator actually do? Do they get to decide the fates of students and faculty, accept awards for work done entirely by their underlings, or think of yet another way to extort money from students?

Maybe. Either way, being a university administrator must be fun enough that Two Point Studios decided it was a good idea to develop Two Point Campus, a business simulation game centred entirely around campus management.

Two Point Campus draws inspiration from the classic 1997 PC game Theme Hospital (side note: Two of Two Point Studios’ founders have actually worked on Theme Hospital.). So, if you’re old enough to remember either that or its spiritual successor, the 2018 PC game Two Point Hospital, this is essentially a refined version with a different, yet still familiar, setting.

Reviewed version	macOS
Release date	9 August 2022
Developer	Two Point Studios
Publisher	SEGA

Two Point Campus puts you in charge of various fictional university campuses in the equally fictional Two Point County, all of which have seen better days. It’s up to you to turn these struggling campuses around.

Most campus scenarios follow a similar straightforward structure: you start with a small plot of land where you build classrooms and other key facilities like bathrooms and dormitories. Once those are in place, it’s time to develop a few courses in whimsical subjects like Virtual Normality, Knight School, or Funny Business.

As students enrol, “level up” and eventually graduate from your university, you earn money and other types of rewards that let you further expand and build the campus of your dreams. Along the way you’ll be given a mix of smaller and larger goals. Completing enough goals allows you to move on to the next campus.

Two Point Campus is well-suited for casual gamers, and I mean that in a good way. The game’s mechanics are easy to learn, and the cartoony 3D art style is charming and likely to stand the test of time.

The gameplay on the other hand might not have the same lasting power. While each scenario introduces a new set of challenges, the main goal in your first year largely remains the same: keeping your campus financially stable. Once you get a handle on generating income, the game can start to feel a bit repetitive.

As you expand your campus and upgrade courses, you’ll build more classrooms and facilities, but they’re often just copies (side note: The game suffers from a bug that sometimes prevents you from re-creating the exact same rooms, which is possibly even more annoying.) of what you’ve already placed. Some goals, like achieving a certain number of A+ students, happen passively as the game progresses. This led to moments where I found myself letting the simulation run in the background, waiting until it completed the goals by itself. The soundtrack and voice-overs, while initially fun and quirky, can also become grating after a while.

Despite these issues, I still found Two Point Campus to be an enjoyable experience overall. If you’re after a light-hearted business management sim that brings back the nostalgia of university life, it’s definitely worth picking up – especially if you catch it on sale. Make sure you get the DLCs as well – School Spirits and Medical School in particular are well worth the money for the (much-needed) variety.