Developer: Two Point Studios
Publisher: SEGA
Platforms: PC

1997’s Theme Hospital is undoubtedly a classic in every sense of the word & it has never really seen a true successor but with the release of Two Point Hospital by a team consisting of some of the original developers of Theme Hospital, we could finally see a hospital simulation game that moves past some of the limitations of the 90s or even reaches the full potential of this unique idea. Two Point Studio’s Mark Webley & Gary Carr have seemingly been biding their time for many years, knowing full well that a spiritual successor to Theme Hospital would pique the interest of many PS1 era or classic PC gamers. They were there for many of Bullfrog & Lionhead studios’ best works from Theme Park to Black & White so they’re no strangers to sim games.  

The basics of Two Point Hospital’s gameplay are similar to Theme Hospital, scratch that, they’re extremely similar. A reception desk & GP’s office are your first priority, from there you can start diagnosing the many quirky new illnesses present in the game. The most basic, like misery guts or Lycanthropy can be cured with concoctions brewed at the pharmacy but as more patients come in you’ll need to expand your treatments, building new rooms to accomodate things like “Pandemic” (patients with pans stuck to their heads) or “lightheadedness” (patients whose heads are literally light bulbs.)

None of these rooms will run without staff so naturally, the hiring & management of staff plays a huge role in the game. Each staff member has special positive & negative traits such as argumentative or hygienic but more importantly, qualifications which allow them to work more efficiently at their job. You can even have staff members completely specialise in a particular field by training them up in a training room & micromanaging which types of rooms each staff member is allowed to work in. It’s a gradual yet fun process which also adds a lot of depth to the game & allows you to offset an increasing amount of patients with a better equipped workforce.  

Research & equipment upgrades are another route to an efficiently run hospital & one of the great things about Two Point Hospital is that you can carry these upgrades through to the next hospital you run. Research rooms don’t become useless once you have access to everything though, as general research can be done to earn more money or unlock basic decorative items. A very nice touch! Overall game progression feels very seamless, you can move on to the next challenge if you wish, but return at any time to improve upon your previous work. Each hospital gives you a series of goals which not only guide you through the game a bit but unlock some of the more important items in the game. The overall goal therefore would be to complete all these challenges & get every hospital in Two Point County to 3 star status. Timed challenges from your own staff as well as VIP visits & emergency situations will also keep you busy.

Though the outer shape of your hospital is always set in stone, the customisation options of Two Point Hospital are extremely flexible & intuitive. There are dozens of items which can be placed all over the hospital to a grid but for the more creative players a press of a button will allow precision placement of any item. Every item placed inside a room increases it’s attractiveness for the patients & staff within that room & helps keep them happy & some items can even be room exclusive & give productivity boosters such as the server which increases the speed of research. Rooms can also be made in to Any shape you desire as long as they conform to an initial minimum size.

When placing items & laying out rooms, it’s good to keep your patients’ & staff’s needs in mind. Food & drinks machines, toilets & ways curb boredom like bookcases & payphones should always be close at hand to stop patients wandering around the hospital when they’re first in a long queue. Unfortunately, even this will not be enough to please some of the characters with perhaps the worst medical condition there is...bad AI. Yes, some patients will simply refuse to eat or drink as they cross the hospital passing dozens of your meticulously placed machines. Some staff will work until the brink of exhaustion, their bladders bursting, before angrily threatening to quit unless you pick them up yourself & place them in the staff room for a rest.

While the patients in Theme Hospital had a very satisfying journey from reception to cure which could be followed easily as they waited patiently outside the relevant rooms & fulfilled their needs at their convenience, Two Point Hospital’s patients seem completely erratic. They rarely wait outside their rooms & barely seem to be able to sit on a bench for more than two seconds before wandering off to some other activity. Despite this, patients will often ignore their needs completely, then complain about it. Worst of all, because patients are usually sent back to the GP’s office after every use of a diagnosis room, the many GP’s offices you will be forced to build will be backed up with huge queues from all over the hospital. This even leads to patients dying through waiting too long unless you manually go through the queue & force patients to treatment, provided their diagnosis bar is past 50%.  

The art style of Two Point Hospital doesn’t quite have the same charm as its isometric predecessor. The rooms & machines all look great, but the characters don’t have the same charm in my opinion & I find it hard to distinguish between patients when they all crowd around specific areas. Animations of the different machines such as the de-lux clinic just don’t seem to have the same character as something like inflation from Theme Hospital. Characters also clip through walls sometimes which looks dumb.

One thing Two Point Hospital nails though is the music which is incredibly reminiscent of late 90s video games both in its style, but also because it’s so damn catchy in general. Another nice aspect to the music is that it’s presented as a radio show that the denizens of Two Point County are listening to, with hilarious egomaniac DJs. There are also hospital announcements of a similar vein to the ones in Theme Hospital.

So Two Point Hospital has a fair few problems but luckily they are all very minor & most of them could probably be fixed by patches. Perhaps the one prevailing point of contention I have with the game is that mod support is an absolute no brainer. The developers have said that they intend for mod support to become available & some Unity Mod Manager mods have already appeared on the Nexus but something like this could have benefited immensely from being developed with mod support in mind. Imagine being able to easily add your own items, rooms or ailments, the possibilities are endless. Without a sandbox mode, level editor or mod support, Two Point Hospital seems in my opinion, just below the quality I would expect from its asking price out of the gate. I am confident however, that this dedicated team has the potential to deliver much bigger & better things from Two Point Hospital & any projects they’ll hopefully be working on in the future.          

Pros:

• Smooth, sleek building system that modernises the genre.

• Hilarious tone executed perfectly.

• Great sense of progression.

Cons:

• Somewhat bland & unremarkable art-style.

• Mod support seems like an integral yet missing feature.

• AI & pathing is all over the place.