Two Point Campus Preview – Enrol for Advanced Wizardry and Knight School

Picking what you want to study at university is one of the most difficult things a young adult has to do. It’s a decision that you inevitably have to start building toward from your mid-teens, going through your GCSEs and then picking the right subjects to continue through whatever strange set up A-levels have these days, hoping that you’ve got the right qualifications to get accepted onto the course of your choice. In Two Point Campus, the decision is made immeasurably more difficult by having the option of studying to become a knight, wizard, giant robot engineer, and so much more!

As you would have expected from the cunning linguists that cooked up the punny diseases of Lightheadedness (to turn your head into a lightbulb) and Pandemic (where your head gets stuck in a pan), the courses available within Two Point Campus are wild and varied. We’ve only seen a handful of them, but Two Point Studios is really all-in on the courses they’re creating and then the levels that they’re theming around each curriculum.

Having already sampled the opening two levels of the game, with Scientography and Gastronomy courses their respective focus, our latest hands-on gave us the chance to play the campuses themed for Knight School and Wizardry, and let me tell you that they absolutely deliver.

Two Point Campus Knight School

Knight School takes place in a quaint village where knights can and do still roam around the village of Noblestead, and all the kids aspire to join the chivalrous form. This is a course that needs a lot of open air to cater to the combat training against dummies, the chivalry training (also with dummies, just with wigs this time), and jousting… while prancing around in a ‘human on horse’ costume. It’s real jousting though, with injuries sending them off to the health centre that you need to construct indoors

So far, so…. sensible? But Spiffinmore goes all Harry Potter with a castle up in the misty hills where you can teach wizards and witches everything there is to know about magic spells, potions and curses. In fact, Spiffinmore itself has been cursed by a former student, meaning you have to deal with periodic meteor showers while building up your potions teaching rooms – with a giant cauldron in the middle – magic duelling rooms, and more. Make sure to splash out on heating though and check the info views to ensure it’s keeping nice and toasty indoors, because this castle doesn’t seem to have double glazing.

The themes here are fantastic, but it’s helped a great deal by how much more control you’re given to put a personal stamp on the surroundings. When you buy a plot of land to expand your campus, you can do so with a pre-built building to fill it, or leave it empty so that you can set out the buildings and outdoor spaces for yourself.

Two Point Campus Wizardry

That’s important because you’ll regularly have to deal with student requests, whether it’s for a particular study station in the library, to place a smooch-tastic romantic bench, or simply to spend Kudosh to unlock a fetching bat poster to decorate their dorms.

The tone of Two Point Campus has shifted away from the very fast, transactional nature of Two Point Hospital – get patients in, fix them and get them out the door again – and to a more custodial role where you need to nurture and keep a student body happy. On the one hand, that means ensuring they have everything they need to study, but they’ll also live on site in dorm rooms that you build, need showers to wash, food kiosks (and vending machines) to keep them fed, and some extra-curricular activities.

It won’t be long before you’re building your ideal Student Union or rec room where they can relax between lectures, and putting on funny movies in the main auditorium to keep them entertained. Through all of this, they’re building friendships with their fellow students, perhaps even more loving relationships. Unhappy students will eventually stop paying and drop out! It’s a fairly light touch, but there’s a little bit of The Sims in this game now.

Two Point Campus Love Bench

One key new element is the classic university rivalry that’s so often depicted in American TV shows and films. Set up your knightly university and you’ll be greeted by Lord Blaggard, the administrator of the neighbouring, much better established campus. They’ll periodically wander over to judge your university’s culture and issue a challenge, but then their students will saunter into your halls and start smashing things up a bit. It’s rather cheeky, but you can hire janitors that specialise in squirting them with super-soakers until they go away. There’s even more subterfuge to be revealed for the Spy School course elsewhere in the game.

It adds to the juggling act when running your campus, and can throw a spanner in the works when a room goes out of action and your paying students can’t be taught!

Two Point Campus is coming together really nicely, and having played on both PC and console now, feels ideally suited to all platforms. I can’t wait to enrol and play more when the game releases on 9th August.

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