Join The Club
I'm a big fan of Two Point Museum, the latest and greatest of Two Point Studios' revival of the Bullfrog-style management sim. But I am also a fan of how the developer has approached the release of its DLCs. You can pay for expansions like Zooseum and Fantasy Finds to get a big chunk of extra stuff to build, but you also get a portion of the DLC for free with each of the game's updates.
Such is the case with Two Point Museum's latest add-on, Arty Facts. As the name implies, this expansion lets you add an art gallery to your institution. The pack adds 27 new art exhibits for your guests to gaze meaningfully at, but it also adds a new "art studio" room where your experts can create paintings of their own. According to the expansion's launch trailer, the art studio facilitates "millions of potential outcomes", thus providing an "endless" stream of custom art.
But the way each artwork type is generated is slightly different. Paintings, for example, have four layers that are each randomly generated, as are the colour palettes of the painting, and the size of both the canvas and the frame. Portraits, meanwhile, have various filters that help define the variation of the images. As for sculptures, players can actually choose between three different materials—clay, marble and bronze—with randomised variations in colour in each.
All told, Sega says the system can produce more than 250 million combinations, far more than you're ever realistically likely to see. That's a lot of extra customisation in a game that already offers a broad array of options, which is pretty neat.
As for the other exhibits, they aren't just limited to paintings and sculptures. You can also create five interactive art displays. This includes performance art exhibits such as mime acts and Shakespearean pastiches, giving Two Point Studios' world class animators yet more room to flex their muscles.
You can put all your curation skills to the test in a new Museum location, Undee Docks, a fittingly urban space to showcase all those emerging artists. There's also new gift shop items, new themed café foods, and a fresh expedition map to explore, which sees your experts get metaphysical as they traverse a living sketchbook.
As mentioned, the DLC's release coincides with an update to the base game that lets you try some of the DLC's features for free. The Arty Facts taster lets you play up to the first star of Undee Docks and explore the first three POIs of the expedition map, and you get full access to the Art Studio.
Two Point Museum: Arty Facts is available for $10/£10, with a 10% discount until May 14. If you're interested in management sims and are yet to try out the base game, you absolutely should. It's the most accomplished game Two Point Studios has made, and its blend of museum construction, expedition wrangling, and general institutional management represents a small but significant step forward for the genre. And if you don't want to take my word for it, check out Mollie Taylor's similarly effusive Two Point Museum review.
