Going to college is stressful. Not only do you have to juggle homework and partying, but you don’t really know your place in the world and, more often than not, have to eat dollar macaroni and cheese from the grocery store. But you know what’s not stressful? Creating your dream university where students can study to become sports stars, archaeologists, clowns, super spies, and everything in between. Two Point Campus is a riotous management game that takes away the bad parts of college and lets you focus on crafting the most prestigious, and bizarre, academy in the world. It’s a strategy game that’s easy to pick up, but with enough depth to keep you engrossed for days on end. And even better, it’s now free to PS Plus subscribers.
Two Point Campus is a sequel to 2018’s Two Point Hospital, a sim-management game where players build and manage a wacky hospital and all its patients. This time around you’re tasked with shepherding the budding minds of the next generation — in other words crafting a university, building the campus, hiring the faculty, and generally running the show.
The Two Point games have a very unique aesthetic and approach, a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor that draws from the whimsy of British humor. This is a game where your culinary students install a giant hamburger machine, or where you’re “Knight School” students have to go to the nurse’s office after getting injured on the jousting field.
Two Point Campus is a game that constantly surprises and delights you, not just in how ridiculous its premise is, but how much fun it is to watch your little students and faculty mill about doing their daily routine. The campuses you build are rich with detail, from the way hotdog stands dispense condiments to how a student who parties too much might not get out of bed the next day.
But as richly detailed as Two Point Campus is, it has the strategy chops to back everything up. The game has a variety of campaign missions with each one giving you a variety of goals while building a unique type of school, but you can also choose free play as well and build to your heart’s desire.
Each stage starts with you constructing the building for the campus, setting the course, and hiring faculty — not just teachers, but things like janitors and security guards as well. Once everything is set up the students start flowing in, and your job switches to maintaining and improving the campus.
You’ll need to beautify your university and make sure it looks nice, provide essential facilities and recreation for everyone, and make sure you’re balancing how much you're spending with the tuition you’re bringing in. All of your students and faculty have unique personalities and needs, meaning it’s a constant juggling act to make sure everyone is satisfied. You also have stereotypical cliques that students start separating into, like the beefy jocks, vampire-obsessed goths, or totally carefree clown students.
But that’s exactly what makes Two Point Campus so thrilling and engrossing to play. The strategy is perfectly tuned so you’re always seeking ways to make your university better, little tricks to improve everyone’s happiness, or the quality of education — like placing air conditioners in the exact right layout so that everyone is cool and can learn peacefully. You lose track of time as you play — just like when you’re prepping that big essay and it’s suddenly four in the morning.
The beauty of Two Point Campus is that it eases you into the experience, starts out slow by teaching you the basics of running a single class and subject, and then starts to layer in complexity as you get a feel for everything. There’s a lot of depth to its management systems, with the game granting you complete control over nearly everything about your school — but that’s only if you want to dig that deep. You can easily hop on for 10 hours, or 200. It’s the perfect thing to cure the blues of fall and winter.
