Expanding the Two Point universe

The Two Point Studios team assembled in 2016 with the goal of developing the perfect IP: a world that can keep players intrigued, be broad and flexible enough for expansion, and stand the test of time. They launched the Two Point universe in 2018 with Two Point Hospital, and, after its success and that of Two Point Campus, have recently released Two Point Museum.

In this multiplatform business simulation game, players can curate and manage museums, explore to discover artifacts, design and refine the layout, and keep staff happy, guests entertained, donations plentiful, and children off the exhibits.

We sat down with Ben Hymers, Two Point Studios’s cofounder and technical director, to learn how the team brought a fresh idea and next-level graphics to their beloved game series.

Let’s start from the beginning. When and how did conversations about Two Point Museum begin?

When Two Point Campus was in production and we needed to choose what to get in the pipeline next, we looked over our list, but Two Point Museum wasn’t on it. The idea came to me on the way home from work one day, and we realized that it ticked all the boxes. After some discussions and prototyping, we decided to move forward with it.

What was the end goal with the title?

We wanted to do something in the same vein as Two Point Hospital and Two Point Campus, but still offer a title that would stand out and provide players with something new.

We didn’t want to go the nostalgic route like we did with Two Point Hospital, as we don’t want to only be known for that. We felt like a museum theme would be ideal, as there aren’t any other popular museum management games.

We also wanted a simpler core game loop than we had with Two Point Campus, which pushed things quite far with students staying over multiple overlapping academic years. The very core of Two Point Museum is simple. Guests visit, donate, leave, and the goal is to make your museum as interesting as possible for them. It’s easy to understand and a great foundation for us to layer on other gameplay systems to give depth to players who want it.

How does it differ from Two Point Hospital and Two Point Campus?

Personalization – we’ve added many customization options to allow players to decorate things their way. There’s now a partition wall tool so they can create arbitrary layouts and not just boxy rooms. They are given wallpapers, custom floor tiles, and a color picker to create beautiful and unique museums.

Exploration – we really wanted to focus on the complete journey. Players can send their staff out on expeditions to find new exhibits to bring back and show off in their museums. There’s a whole side of the game around training and choosing staff, setting up the expedition, managing the obstacles along the way, and then dealing with the possible issues that can happen when, or if, the staff get back.

Lighting – we’ve really ramped up the graphical quality in Two Point Museum with a custom Global Illumination-like lighting system that spreads light around beautifully. We’re very proud of how pretty the game looks.

Let’s move on to the game’s development. Gamedev is chock full of unexpected moments. What surprised you the most while building the game?

The graphical quality. Two Point Hospital and Two Point Campus looked great in their own ways, but once the new lighting system was switched on, Two Point Museum was brought to the next level. When I saw the dark corners contrasting with the glowing bright areas near windows, and the exhibits lit with spotlights similar to a real museum, I really felt we had something special and new on our hands.

How did Unity come into the mix?

The Unity Editor itself was key. Most of the game’s design data is stored in ScriptableObjects and edited by the design team through the normal Inspector windows with custom drawers for certain properties.

Then on top of this, we have some custom Editor windows. For example, there’s one to edit AI graphs, extending EditorWindow, and another to edit the expedition map ‘tears’ built on UI Toolkit. Not having to write all of these from scratch as standalone editors saved us a lot of engineering time and having them available from very early on in the project meant the design team could start experimenting quickly.

What was the biggest challenge during development?

The biggest hurdle has been shipping on multiple platforms simultaneously. The new lighting system, plus all the detailed optimization we’ve needed to do to keep performance high, meant that each platform behaved quite differently and exposed bugs in the code. The Integrated Success team has been great at assisting us in tracking these down and fixing them.

Backtrace error reporting was also really helpful. We also used it for Two Point Campus, and it’s been amazing for helping us see error data across all the platforms we release on. No matter how robust you think something is, there are always unexpected ways it’ll break “out in the wild,” so having Backtrace there to alert us to issues and help narrow down the causes has been so important for expanding the game.

A common obstacle studios face is keeping a franchise fresh. What advice would you give to developers looking to create an IP with plans for multiple iterations?

Don’t change too much, but don’t change too little either. Players, and the team, will get bored if you just repeat the same formula, but if you change it too much then you’ll alienate your existing players. You need to decide what your sweet spot is.

Now that the game has been released, what do you hope fans experience while playing it?

I hope they have a laugh. It turns out that we haven’t run out of dumb jokes yet. We’ve managed to come up with loads more for Two Point Museum, and I have a little chuckle every time I play.

After years of development, a game’s launch can be a time for reflection. What are you most proud of with the release?

I’m most proud of the team. The company has been going for nearly nine years now and this is our third game. We’ve managed to keep quality high without cutting corners, and given the state of the industry right now, I think that’s quite an accomplishment.

Want to know more about Two Point Studios’s development experiences? You can learn more by watching the Tips for starting a multiplatform game roundtable.