Two Point Campus (PC), Space Academy DLC review: Who wants to go to space?

The holidays are here, and school is out. But fans of management sim games may want to sign up for a different type of classroom experience instead – trying their hands at running a virtual university in Two Point Campus.

In this quirky game, you take on the role of a university administrator, responsible for building, expanding and running the campus. Oh, and making sure your virtual students graduate with top grades as well. Two Point Campus launched earlier this year in August 2022, and its first game expansion, the Space Academy DLC, just dropped a couple of weeks back. Together, this expanded title makes for a fun distraction for seasoned management sim gamers, and is a great introduction for those new to the genre.

If you have played Two Point Hospital, Sega’s first title in its Two Point management game series, or even the classic PC game Theme Hospital, you will be in familiar territory when playing Two Point Campus. The game features the same cute graphic style, wacky characters, and dark humour, accompanied by a simple-to-understand yet surprisingly comprehensive gameplay system.

Two Point Campus starts off very easy, setting you up in a simple, undemanding university that offers just a couple of courses and ten students. Your job as university administrator is to build facilities such as classrooms and dormitories for your students, employ good teachers to educate your young charges, and make sure you have enough support staff to run campus facilities or clean up the trash.

If you do things right, more students (and the corresponding moolah) will come. But fail to manage your campus well and you’ll see your students start to drop out of school, while an extended lack of good academic performance can lead to the university facing financial and reputational ruin.

As you progress through the stages, you’ll unlock new facilities that you can build, as well as new courses and subjects that you can offer at your university. Each stage lets you manage a new university on the game’s expansive map, with each campus featuring its own unique challenge.

The base game offers a collection of universities featuring different themes, from a medieval castle to a campus set in a culinary paradise. In the Space Academy expansion, players get access to a new map with a range of space-themed universities they can run, as well as a range of new technology and sci-fi inspired courses to offer aspiring graduates.

For people who enjoy building games, Two Point Campus lets you build to your heart’s content. I found myself building, modifying, or re-decorating my virtual campus all the time, a task that was both mundane yet rather enjoyable at the same time.

However, this is really where the good things end for seasoned players, as the game is too easy. Gamers who have played Two Point Hospital will be familiar with how challenging the title can be, as they have to deal with in-game emergencies and manage different crisis situations. Two Point Campus, on the other hand, is surprisingly (and unnervingly) relaxing.

Because Two Point Campus’ gameplay is structured around a virtual school year, players have plenty of in-game time to construct, edit, and fine-tune the running of their university without the pressure of the clock rapidly winding down. Even though there were lots of facilities to build and plenty of courses, students, and staff to manage, Two Point Campus’ in-game money system is simple enough that getting your campus to turn a profit is almost effortless.

While the interior designer in me really loved how Two Point Campus offered the freedom to build and decorate as I pleased, it also felt unsatisfying because trying to fail a stage is a harder thing to do than winning it.

It was a good thing then, that Sega released the Space Academy update, as this DLC expansion added a good collection space-themed stages that offered a bit more of a challenge. Among the additions that helped crank up the difficulty level was the introduction of space rocks, which tend to fall and strike certain campuses on the Space Academy map. While previous weather-related effects such as meteors only required a clean-up by your campus janitors, the space rocks can be mined for rewards, while some others can harbour diseases that affect students if not removed quickly enough.

On the other hand, this game is an excellent first foray for those new to management sim titles. The comprehensive build-and-manage gameplay offers enough depth for players to feel involved and in charge, but is not overly difficult and generally stress-free.

If you are a seasoned management sim gamer looking for a nice distraction from your regular programming of complex, brain-wrecking games, then Two Point Campus works as a great stress-reliever. For people who are new to the management sim titles and are eager to find out what makes this genre so appealing, this game is a must buy.

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