Two Point CampusandTwo Point Hospitalhave been firm favourites of mine since their respective releases, largely thanks to their ability to combine well-structured building and management gameplay with a large dose of humour. In previous Campus DLC packs, we’ve gone to space and busted ghosts, but with Medical School, Two Point Studio’s worlds are colliding to create a beautiful medical hospital campus, combining some familiar illnesses and treatments from Two Point Hospital with some entirely new problems to overcome.
Medical School brings three new campuses to Two Point County and each one is unique in the way it has to be approached. Lake Tumble is pretty traditional, focusing on curing those who end up in plaster during their mountain retreat. Molten Rock tasks you with treating patients while also appeasing a sentient volcano. Finally, Pointy Peak offers an array of goals you’ll have to meet in order to raise enough money to keep your campus open.
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If this all sounds a little Two Point Hospital, that’s because it is. You’ll need wards, psychiatrists, surgery rooms, and treatment rooms. All these will be run by your medical staff and procedures observed, or even conducted by students. It has Two Point Hospital vibes, but the rooms will get extra crowded with mohawked students armed with clipboards.
While there are a lot of similarities, Medical School is still an educational campus at its core. Staff will still want access to a staff room and basic amenities, but you’ll also need to continue to provide all the facilities students expect as well. This adds an extra layer of challenge to the game. You’ll need to think more about the layout than you might expect as you strive to keep everyone happy, and alive.
With building sims there’s always a danger of DLC becoming repetitive, but thought has clearly been put into making this experience unique. Not only do you have to consider all aspects of patient care alongside student care, but all three levels require different approaches.
Lake Tumble saw me start confidently. I’ve completed every base game level, as well as the previous DLC, and I was overly optimistic about my chances. Then came the patients. So many patients. Distracted by amusing illnesses like Piste Off - a skiing accident - and Reptile Dysfunction - believing you are a medieval dragon - I didn’t anticipate that they would be so difficult to cure, and that’s entirely on me. I mean I’m running this place with a bunch of ill-experienced students, half of whom think the figleaf attire of nature club members is an appropriate outfit for classes. What did I expect?
So as the queue of Space Caged patients queuing outside psychiatry wearing a dustbin and a plunger increased - they’re ‘trapped in their own fandom’ - I was trying to research anything and everything I could to help. The final star of this level requires a cure level of 90 percent, and it’s a challenge I’m yet to overcome.
Molten Rock on the other hand, has no real interest in your cure rate, but it does have a sentient volcano, a lot of fire, and some pirates. Yes, really. Pirates weren’t on my list of people I expected to treat, but when your hospital is on a volcanic island it does make sense. I expected they may be less averse to the odd amputated leg or hand, should the need arise, but it seems they are much pickier than you may think. When ships appear on the horizon your outcomes are either buried treasure or a campus invasion, something I found out the hard way.
Pirates are unrelenting, and so is the volcano. Each section of land you unlock requires you to meet a goal, and you’ll periodically get extra tasks which will result in either blessings or actual fire raining down on your campus. At one point pirates were invading a campus on fire while all the janitors ran around in a state of confusion, seemingly unsure if they should extinguish the fire or let it burn a little longer and potentially solve the pirate issue…
Expect chaos. I had machines on fire, people on fire, fire on fire. The volcano doesn’t let up and no one will go near anything on fire until specially trained janitors have sorted the mess. Diverting their attention will be vital or you’ll end up like me, in a smoking heap of rubble that used to be a head clinic wondering what happened to those nice quiet mimes we had in the first level while pirates run amok.
In a move that is sure to please socialists everywhere, education is free when the ambient temperature is below zero. This means there is no regular income for your campus in Pointy Peak. Luckily there are challenges to meet to secure some crucial funds, which vary hugely and included making students fall in love. I’m not entirely sure that helps keep them focused on their studies, or that it’s appropriate for university owners to play matchmaker, but at least I didn’t need to start a nature club to entertain them. Sadly, while they avoided some very bad frostbite, this campus does give occupants brain freeze, literally, and their heads turn into ice blocks.
The first time I noticed this en-masse was when a group of students got hit on the way to the student union for a gig. They entered the building with ice cube heads and proceeded to mosh to Jasmine Odyssey. It looked like they’d all turned up to a Marshmello gig cosplaying as the DJ and it somehow summarised everything I love about this game.
Medical School offers a dose of Two Point Hospital, mixed in with Two Point Campus and covered liberally in the very British humour the studio is known for. You’ll build facilities, train students, deal with emergencies, extinguish fires and even bust ghosts if those treatment plans go awry. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get someone to cure my Brain Farts.
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