Two Point Hospital

Two Point Hospital is a re-imagination of the iconic Theme Hospital and it’s a very well done one too!

The game takes a silly approach to the ongoings of a hospital similar to ‘Theme Hospital’. You have patients with a variety of odd illnesses. Those infected by Night Fever are always dancing and require psychiatric help. Light headed people literally have a light bulb for a head that needs unscrewing and a new head attaching. All the cures have cartoonish animations that speaks “Theme Hospital” but done today.

Building Your Hospital's a Level at a Time

The game is separated out into levels and each has a list of concerns and challenges. As you progress through the levels that list will change and expand becoming more difficult. It’s very easy to get building. The navigation menus are cleanly laid out. One much requested feature was added that allows you to copy and paste rooms. Thanks for listening developers!

Each level has multiple buildings for you to purchase and build within. Discovering a layout that works for you is part of the fun. Do you want to have all the nurses work in one area, or separate out the diagnosis and cure buildings? It can be rewarding to see your design facilitate the needs of the patients and if not, then hit the reset button and come up with a new plan!

Outside of diagnosis and treatment rooms there are of course staff rooms, receptions, toilets, some shop stalls and a cafeteria. Although beware the cafeteria trap because it can lead to long wait times. A patient won’t put down their hamburger just because they’re next in line for the x-ray machine. They’ll finish that up leaving everyone else waiting…and dying.

There is also the marketing department where you can spend money to promote a certain type of cure. look for certain specialist staff members or simply increase the hospitals reputation. This department adds a little sandbox element to the game as you can “kind of” specialise in treating a particular sickness.

The Patients

Whilst there is currently 51 ailments in Two Point County and more in the DLC’s, patients aren’t just some fleshbags that only need healing. Their happiness is a factor too. Keep them fed, don’t let them become thirsty, make sure they’re warm (but not too warm!) and if they’re waiting then give them some magazines to read or arcade machines to play. Patient happiness plays a part of your reputation and happy patients are more willing to pay.

Staff

Staff members have positive and negative traits that cannot be changed. They also have 5 ranks they can be promoted up to. Each rank giving them a skill slot. When a member of staff is promoted you can send them to a training room to learn a new skill, or improve an old one.

You can also tell staff what their role is within the hospital. Whether you want them to only work on the x-ray machine or in surgery. The combination of these two features means there are a few ways you can handle the logistics of your hospital.

Feedback

It’s very easy to identify a problem within your facility. At first glance you can see where bottlenecks happen. If the many patients waiting outside a room isn’t a give away then the giant icon above the room should be easy to spot.

The insightful information you can get from the staff and income panels will assist in your plan of action. The only lacking bit of information this game has is it does not breakdown your expenses. If you’re trying to cut costs rather than increase revenue then the only real option is firing staff or at least handing out pay cuts.

The Major Problem

Patients will first start out at the GP’s office for a Diagnosis and then be sent to what the doctor thinks would be the best equipment to help diagnose the problem. That patient will return to the GP’s office to hear the results and either be sent for more diagnosis or treatment.

This means the patient will go to a GP office multiple times and later on in the game you require an insane amount of GP offices to be able to keep up. Patients are dying as they are stuck in heavy wait times and there is no solution to this problem besides more GP offices. That might be easy to solve but there isn’t enough room to build that many GP offices.

This issue might be solvable if there were some additional controls for the player. Being able to set what percentage a patient has been diagnosed to send them to treatment early rather than requiring them to be diagnosed 100% like in Theme Hospital. Better yet setting a maximum patients allowed in the hospital or just being able to temporarily close to new patients. Creating an automated priority system for wait times so that those identified at risk of death are put to the top of queues.

I loved the Radio. There’s a Radio Host in the game who between songs chimes in with some comments that leave a smile on your face. He reminds me of the Yoga from Zootopia, or Zootropolis if your in the UK (We still call it Zootopia). The tunes are very chill and I think the game could have used more songs to go in the background. Whilst it does get a little repetitive it isn’t irritating. You can download lots of music on the steam workshop too!

Summary

I think this is a game that was missing from our lives. For anyone that liked Theme Hospital then you should already own this game. If you don’t have it already then you won’t regret getting it. The few flaws of the game can be overlooked. Maybe one day they will be addressed. They are still caring for the game and expanding it so at the very least there is new and exciting content to continue the legacy of Theme Hospital which has been passed on to Two Point Hospital.