Inside the design of Two Point Museum: iterating on success and imagining the future
25.6.2025
Por Len Hafer, Contributor
One thing I've noticed with each new Two Point game is the team's ability to iterate on what came before and make something deeper and more robust, which is hardly a given for strategy and management games.
"I think it's a factor of us thriving on feedback from the community, and basically anyone we can put the game in front of," Huskins explained. "Quite early in development we try to get anyone from outside the company to try and play the game. And I think it's that in combination with that iterative design that's a bit of our secret sauce. That willingness to evolve the design and not being too rigid with any one decision."
And when they say they iterate, they aren't kidding around. The new expedition system, which allows museums to send away teams to uncover new artifacts, is hardly something they got right the first time.
"I think [there were] about 500 iterations," Koehler recalled. "We aimed to do fewer things really, really well. But I think with Museum we ended up doing quite a lot of things with all of the features surrounding the expedition maps and the themes."
When it came to designing the expeditions themselves, their respective inspirations came from a variety of places, including some you wouldn't immediately associate with a quirky management game, like Firaxis' newer XCOM titles. In fact, there was a stage where the expeditions were a bit more hands-on.
"The initial discussions were sort of, 'Do you go on the expeditions? Do you see the character there?'" Finlay-Maxwell said. "And then we spent some time figuring out, actually, it's a museum management game at its core, so the expedition system should supplement that and not be the focus."
When it comes to the often irreverent and satirical tone, Two Point County takes its cues from a franchise that couldn't be further from the harrowing alien invasion of XCOM. In fact, it's heavily inspired by the First Family of animated sitcoms.
"Going right back to the very origin of Two Point… the reference point was Springfield from The Simpsons," Huskins revealed. "And I love that idea of Two Point County being our version of Springfield, where there's all these different characters that get added over time and get referenced with each game. We reference that pop star or that movie star or that health inspector. And then slowly encountering these different businesses."
While The Simpsons—and the previous Two Point games—could get dark on occasion, expedition members notably can't actually die in Two Point Museum. Rather, they are labelled MIA; the studio made this decision deliberately as part of an ongoing balancing act between the goofier elements of the franchise and the more grounded ones.
"We have had death in Two Point Hospital," Finlay-Maxwell said. "Patients could die. And for Museum, because you're actually sending [staff members] out, it just felt a bit too harsh. It didn't feel quite right."
But while tone is one thing, gameplay is another. It's a chronic issue: Games aiming to be kid-friendly may not have strategic systems deep or challenging enough for teens and adults to really sink their teeth into. Not so with the Two Point games, though. And the devs certainly aren't blind to how big of a challenge this is to take on.
"It is wanting to have our cake and eat it," Huskins admitted. "We want to have it where anyone can pick it up and play it, but it still has that kind of meaty management depth to it. And really what we do is spend a lot of time focused on how to layer on each of the systems, how to tutorialize things and onboard players onto different concepts."
"We've seen players who would go, 'I never thought I would want to tweak prices and things like that,'" Finlay-Maxwell said. "But because it's such a gradual incline they end up going, 'Oh, I can take that on and I can do those management aspects.' So as much as possible, we try to retain the depth, but really focus on the onboarding."
"We're trying to almost trick people into playing a game that they might not think about playing," Huskins added. "Management sim games as a genre possibly have a bit of a reputation of being a little bit overwhelming when you first play them. So for us, that was a bit of a challenge. How can we work around that and still have all of those gameplay nuances, but ease people in so within a few hours they are noodling around with ticket prices, zoning, and stuff they never would have imagined doing at the start?"
Beyond the mechanical balancing act, though, there's also a fine line between madcap humor and full-on farce. In creating the world of Two Point County, these devs have had to navigate that as well. The secret is surprisingly simple.
"I think it comes down to how many of the things you're encountering are of that more surreal, left-field style," Huskins said.
"The radiators in Hospital are always just radiators," Finlay-Maxwell continued. "They look like radiators. If everything is wacky, then nothing is. You need that grounding."
Of course, having sunk dozens of hours into Two Point Museum myself, I'm curious where the series might go next. My own pitch was a resort, which the devs seemed to find interesting, so if that ends up happening, you heard it here first. But while I knew they couldn't spoil what they're working on right now, I did want to hear where they, personally, might like to see the series go in the future.
"There are lots of possibilities," Huskins said. "We definitely intentionally built our world in such a way that it kind of seeded ideas for lots of potential directions that it could go. Even down to things like using the radio and adverts that you hear, and areas that are referenced or characters that show up."
"I think a zoo game," Koehler added. "We've got fish, so we've done a little bit with animals, but delving into… I don't even know what Two Point animals look like, and I'd love to find out. So that's what I'd love to do."
"I want to work on a game that has as much systemic flexibility as Museum," Finlay-Maxwell chimed in with a cautious laugh. "I'm not in a management position. I've got stakes. I'm gonna keep it safe!"
Not all the ideas they have kicking around in their heads are traditional business management-type stuff either, though.
"I don't actually know how this would work as a Two Point game, but one of the old Bullfrog games that I was always a massive fan of was Dungeon Keeper," Huskins said. "There's something about that game that's got that nostalgia for me. So it would be great to play around with something along those lines. Maybe there's a way that we can make that fit conceptually within our world. Because I think we're always keen to surprise people a bit with each game that we make. So there's lots of possibilities."
Two Point Museum will arrive on Epic Games Store on June 26.