Turns out running a university can be goofy, cheeky fun even when players are running it into the ground with all the expensive college parties and dorms. Such is the case onTwo Point Campus. It’s part of theTwo Pointanthology where players try their best to manage certain businesses and institutions in a parody template, complete with satirical visuals and spoofs of their real-world counterparts.
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Fans ofTwo Point Hospitalwill find plenty to like here, and whileTwo PointCampusis generally well-received, it has some rough edges that contrast with its rather smooth and well-rounded art style. The game certainly isn’t without its issues despite it being another good installment in theTwo Pointuniverse. Thankfully, it’s easy to fix some of these immediately noticeable shortcomings with some quick suggestions.
8Correct Keyboard Instructions
A business sim’s tutorial is where the player base might decide that the game is for them. Anything too steep and they might give up climbing that hill. The issue withTwo Point Campus' tutorials and instructions is that they’re sometimes wrong, despite being generally easy to follow. There are times when the game will instruct players to press a key for a certain function, even if that key is bound by default to a different command.
The most notorious one is the “press ‘W’ to rotate the camera” when in reality, that key is already bound to forward panning. A lot of players had to troop down to the forums and create help threads to find out the actual instructions. It’s not game-breaking by a long shot, but it certainly might frustrate newcomers.
7More Pronounced Differences From Two Point Hospital
One big fundamental complaint forTwo Point Campusis how it’s too similar toTwo PointHospital. Some players even reckon that the developers could have just soldTwo Point Campusas a DLCforTwo Point Hospitalsince it really doesn’t do much to spice up the series formula.
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Some hardcore fans forTwo Point Hospitaleven swear that they find nothing else of substance to do onTwo Point Campusbecause they’ve already seen it in the former game after several hundreds of hours. While this woe might be limited to die-hard fans of the previousTwo Pointgames, a lot of reviewers do share the same sentiments.Two Point Campusneeds to do more to set itself apart. DLCs could easily fix this.
6More Novelty Features
Speaking of DLCs or something thatTwo Point Campuscould have done to make itselfless homogenousthanTwo Point Hospital, more innovation on its part would have helped a lot. Since schools tend to be grounds for creative and academic expression, more creative options for building campuses would have been welcome here.
For one, the game’s building schemes and mechanics don’t really improve much upon the same system inTwo Point Hospital. There are still no options to build unconventional building layouts so players can wave their post-modern university design dreams goodbye. Overall, more features like this to shake up the dynamics of the already tried-and-tested formula from older games would have helped the game’s status a lot.
5Deeper School Mechanics & Higher Stakes
While on the topic of more meaningful mechanics and new features, somethingTwo Point Campuscould have done to give more to its players isbetter goals. The stakes here aren’t as high as the one atTwo Point Hospital,where patients can literally die and turn into ghosts or ailing queues in the reception area would just leave for a more accommodating hospital.
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At worst, it’s just poor grades that will worry the players on top of going bankrupt. Emulating student behavior outside of academics would have added another layer of complexity here. Having them gather up and organize protests or even criminal delinquency definitely would have given more depth to the game’s campus management.
4More Content
Of course,Two Point Campuswon’t be having any of those suggestions above without introducing more content to the base game. As it is, a lot of players don’t really find much to do in the game other than expanding their university and being an education mogul. Being a discount student counselor where players have to worry about the students' grades is good, but it was a rather shallow implementation.
Better goals than yanking the campus out of debt or negative income or just fostering more conducive educational institutions for students is something that the game could add in the future. Perhaps something like aCivilization-stylegoal like producing “Great People” such as historical artists, leaders, and merchants in the university could be interesting. Or even exploring education systems in other time periods via DLCs would add so much to the game.
3Bigger Graphical Improvements & New Visual Style
One good reason why the game feels so much like its predecessor is how it also didn’t innovate much in the graphics and visual style. Sure, this style is probably a trademark and signature for theTwo Pointseries at this point, but something more fresh or just different could have washed offtheTwo Point Hospitalaftertaste.
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Some eagle-eyed players could also probably spot the asset-reuse here fromTwo Point Hospital. It’s understandable that there might have been time constraints, hence why theTwo Point Campusused the same graphical engine and assets, but that didn’t help the series' veterans see this game as an independent title or a new thing.
2Streamlined UI & General Polish
As mentioned earlier, the game can be rough around the edges since it’s still close to its release date (at the time of writing). It’s only been out for a few days. The user interface is one area that the developers need to work on immediately as it’s not exactly the most functional or welcoming.
Too often there would be missing tooltips, sub-optimal layouts, or absent information. Some of this information is even crucial. For example, the game does tell players why some students' grades are failing yet it would also fail to tell why and what brief steps are needed to fix the problem. Players would then have to go down a rabbit hole of beautified excel sheets to determine the root of the problem.
1General Bugs & Glitches Fix
Crashes, poor performance, and some infuriating peripheral problems brought down the game’s reception to something less than stellar. Some glaring oversights, such as forced controller usage (if the game detects a controller), or the lack of a button to switch back to mouse and keyboard are some of the worst offenders.
Initially, the game also forced players to finish the campaign in order to unlock the sandbox mode, but that has since been remedied with a hotfix. So on this front, there’s not much to worry about as most bugs and glitches that get reported will eventually be ironed out. Regardless, the game is still a fun experience.
Two Point Campusis available on Linux, macOS, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
