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Two Level Studios have established a legacy of goofy simulators with their earlier video games, Two Level Hospital (the non secular successor to 1997’s Theme Hospital) and Two Level Campus, asking gamers to reach institutional entrepreneurship via their set of distinctly foolish business-building methods.
Now, the studio is solidifying its place with a 3rd installment, Two Level Museum, which duties you with fixing up a, you guessed it, failing museum after its earlier proprietor suspiciously dipped out. Capitalizing on the sequence’ goofy humorousness and forgiving gameplay, Two Level Museum isn’t hell-bent on reinventing the studio’s tried and examined components. Nonetheless, regardless of this overly acquainted setup, Two Level has delivered a beginner-friendly administration sim PC game that I discovered surprisingly onerous to place down.
Evaluation data
Platform reviewed: PC
Obtainable on: PS5, Xbox Collection X|S, PC
Launch date: February 27, 2025
In Two Level Museum, your time is spent balancing your earnings via ticket gross sales and donations, in addition to compelling company with uncommon displays and intriguing interactive tools like dino playgrounds and sound cubicles. The persons are fickle, although, and it’s not sufficient simply to have a caveman trapped in ice or a stegosaurus tail slide. You’ll additionally want to decorate up that caveman with thematic decor, in addition to ship your hardworking explorers out to search out extra icemen within the wild, too.
To do that, you’ll take part in a mix of lively and idle gameplay, organising Expeditions — which play like a passive resource-collecting minigame — and sustaining your buyer’s happiness by increase native facilities and cleansing the museum clear.
Your workers are the hardworking spine of your success, with important work break up between Consultants, Janitors, Assistants, and Safety Guards. If you happen to can handle and practice them properly, the outer wilds of the sport’s map develop into your playground, together with your workforce capable of steal sufficient artifacts to make your museum the best vacationer vacation spot on this planet. The Pure Historical past Museum may need whale bones, nevertheless it does not have a plant that births a clown each jiffy, does it?
You aren’t severe folks
Early within the marketing campaign, your major consideration is whether or not to ship your workers on expeditions or go away them again to work, although admittedly, this isn’t a very difficult alternative. Each exploits earn them expertise to stage up and be taught new expertise that make them extra environment friendly, and you’ll comfortably stretch to afford multiples of every staffing kind from the early recreation. That is till you begin to discover additional afield, and the expeditions develop into extra harmful.
At first, the journeys you’re making look easy, and you’ll select your workers primarily based on who will likely be lacking from work moderately than who’s the least prone to die. That doesn’t final lengthy, although, as sure areas on the map will ultimately prop up complicated Occasion Playing cards that dictate riskier boundaries to success. Right here, the aim turns into matching your employee and their talent to the occasion to nullify the problem or pay the worth.
On one event, my under-prepared archaeology knowledgeable bought IBS on a job and couldn’t work, so I needed to ship him off to the hospital for a hefty price. A number of journeys later, my favourite janitor went MIA, and I needed to practice one other workers member to interchange him, leaving me unable to run the missions till everybody was in control.
Unpredictable occasions additionally try and sully your finest efforts and pop up mid-mission, asking you to make selections in regards to the expedition, with the mistaken determination leading to sickness or worse. The place beforehand I had been haphazardly delivery off anybody to earn treasured loot, I rapidly started enjoying favourite, taking the time to neutralize threats. This consideration added a much-needed layer of technique that did properly to maintain me centered and drew my consideration in the direction of workers administration as a vital metric moderately than an afterthought.
Greatest bit
There’s one thing so humorous about sardonic British tannoy enjoying overhead in your native store, a humour Two Level Studios clearly understands with Two Level Museum. As you potter alongside, designing displays and sending your staff on perilous expeditions, an occasional voice will pontificate, delivering informational addresses loaded with contempt. Whereas there have been far too many good ones to select from, my favourite arrived as I arrange my first tour, with the voice overhead saying: “Infantile conduct will likely be met with infantile retribution.”
Exterior of Expeditions, particular occasions happen randomly, drawing your consideration again to the Museum. For instance, well being inspections and distinctive guests require the house to be in prime form once they arrive, with cleanliness and exhibit high quality including to the general expertise. Whereas these metrics aren’t onerous to hit, having a number of extra issues to juggle on my strategy to complete success was good.
Two Level Studios’ wacky British humor is seen in virtually each facet of Two Level Museum. All through the marketing campaign, I used to be delighted at any time when a textual content window would pop up or a tannoy would play overhead, giving me one other probability to giggle on the goofy writing. This model applies to the non-verbal points of the sport, with the NPCs performing out and interacting with my historic items in unlikely methods.
As my exhibitor numbers skyrocketed, the house turned extra like a The place’s Wally e-book of cartoonish weirdos, and all it took was me to zoom in randomly and watch somebody come out of a carnivorous plant or lick an historic amber pod. These irreverent moments of stupidity not solely made me giggle however did properly to interrupt up the repetitive nature of Two Level Museums‘ extra tedious administration actions.
Life finds a method
Designing rooms and displays is the place Two Level Museum actually shines, and I totally loved inserting tropical shrubbery and plotting dinosaur ft decals as if guiding company via a Common theme park journey. Guests are most drawn to displays with ‘Buzz’, a metric associated to how new the piece is and the way properly it’s dressed. Sure displays require particular decor to earn Buzz boosts, providing mild contact steerage to your inside design exploits.
Your displays should even have instructional prowess, with some patrons preferring edutainment over pure pizazz. Very similar to the remainder of Two Level Museum’s forgiving gameplay, balancing these metrics isn’t overly difficult. Fortunately, the UI types the precise set dressing by room, so that you don’t have to trawl via random menus to search out your lacking piece.
If dinosaurs aren’t your factor, Two Level Museum additionally presents different Museum genres, every with its personal distinctive aim. The ghost-infested Wailon Lodge encourages you to discover a rift between worlds and home discovered poltergeists in distinctive houses that match their time interval. Alternatively, Passwater Cove asks you to dive for all method of fish and construct lavish coastal aquariums to accommodate them in. The alternate areas aren’t simply extensions of the bottom and supply distinctive decor and mechanics that flesh out Two Level Museum’s foundational gameplay properly.
Sadly, as a lot as I adored going large on design, a densely packed house was extra worthwhile for achievement in practically each state of affairs. Whereas I did discover time to flex my artistic muscle groups via frosty flooring and flora-forward props, the urge to min-max my workers routes typically fell increased on my to-do record than model alone. The decision in the direction of effectivity isn’t helped by the sport’s ‘Kudosh’ forex, which lets you unlock extra cosmetics by hitting particular achievements. When my baggage of earnings arrived with out a lot further work, Kudosh enabled a extra instrumental model play, often creating an odd bottleneck for my design targets.
Fortunately, Two Level Museum’s Sandbox mode is the salve to many of those points. Break up into three sections (Inventive, Profession, and Hardcore), this mode opens doorways to those that wish to construct bespoke buildings, like myself, or these, ahem, masochists who’re in search of a way more complicated and punishing administration expertise.
Regardless of the stress to ship monetary success and the plethora of passive methods to contemplate, my time with Two Level Museum was surprisingly worry-free. As I persistently dipped into the monetary pink and despatched my overpaid employees on expeditions, I by no means discovered myself on the verge of chapter or failure – a far cry from the heightened emotional funding of Frostpunk 2. Nonetheless, I felt compelled to return to my museum even with out impending doom on my coattails coaxing me on, which speaks to the sport’s idiosyncratic appeal and accessability.
Do you have to play Two Level Museum?
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Accessibility
In Two Level Museum, you possibly can entry the settings submenu from the Pause menu at any time within the recreation. From the primary Sport subhead, you possibly can toggle on and off digital camera shake, flash results, and character restrict. You may as well select your Sport Autosave frequency (Ingame – Each Month, Each Three Months, Each Six Months) and your Profession Auto Save Frequency (Each Change, Most Modifications). From right here, you too can toggle on Subtitles and a Participant Idle Message, in addition to toggle UI Scale (Small, Medium) and Standing Icon Filter (All Icons, Decreased Icons, Minimal Icons, Important Icons).
The place sound is worried, you possibly can tweak particular person streams, resembling Tannoy, SFX, and UI, utilizing a slider from the Audio submenu Settings menu. Within the Controls Menu, you’ve the choice to toggle on/off Inverted Vertical and Horizontal Digicam Rotation, in addition to Digicam Edge Scrolling, Controller Enter, and vibration. From right here, you too can use a slider to dictate digital camera sensitivities for panning, pitch, zoom, and rotation. You may as well rebind keys to fit your set-up.
How I reviewed Two Level Museum
We performed Two Level Museum’s marketing campaign and sandbox mode on the bottom mannequin Steam Deck and gaming PC for round 20 hours. I used an AOC 27-inch QHD VA 144Hz gaming monitor for my PC, a Logitech MX Master 3S mouse, and a Logitech G915 TKL keyboard. I used my exterior Inventive Pebble V2 computer speakers and Audio Technica ATH-MX50X headphones plugged right into a Scarlett 2i2 interface for sound. My GPU is an RTX 3080, and my CPU is an AMD Ryzen 9 3950X.