What Two Point Museum Says About New Museology

Recently, I dived straight into Two Point Museum with full abandon, and I can now say I have logged a fair number of hours perfecting my zany museum in typical Two Point fashion. However, what kept me engaged was not just the fun gameplay loop, but perhaps also being able to partake in something that sparked from my past.

My past in Archaeology, after all, includes a graduate certificate in museum studies, and this game got all the gears turning. I felt inspired to write something about archaeology again after needing a break from finishing up the thesis on Lovecraft & Archaeology. And this game delivers in many areas, including ones I have touched on before.

So let’s dive right in.

The Reality Under The Fun

My current Memento Mile Museum in Two Point Museum.

New Museology is a concept that dates back to at least the 80’s, when museums around the world started to, theoretically, do things differently than they did before. Now, from experience, this is still often debated as a theoretical approach, and one that continues to be beaten far past death nearly forty years later. Believe me, it’s still being talked about as if it’s new. But this is, in part, due to the fact that many museums continue to ignore its existence in practice.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all because museums want to hold onto the past, but there are a myriad of reasons for it. Namely, financial ones. If a museum can’t even afford to pay the bulk of its staff, it can’t afford to change the entire institution to fit a standard that isn’t new anymore.

Enter Two Point Museum.

The game presents itself as a satirical picture of a museum, where you are the new curator tasked to build up a museum whose former curator has gone missing. It isn’t based in the real world as there are plenty of magical objects, real ghosts, and cheese aliens that live on the moon. But the references to the real world are clearly intentional, and I find it quite funny that the studio is British, given the British Museum’s current standing on the artifacts within.

However, this may also be intentional. The game has dialog such as, “No one takes our stuff,” that may allude to more than just thieves breaking in. There’s even a nod to the idea of unpaid tour guides as working staff, with the line, “Guests found explaining things will be made honorary staff.” It’s funny, and also sad, given how many museums survive on the backs of volunteers (& unpaid interns).

I could talk all day about the little nods in this game, so I have narrowed it down to a few main points. First up, expeditions.

Expeditions in Two Point County

Part of the Bone Belt expedition map in Two Point Museum.

The expeditions are an interesting nod to a few different things. The missing curator, we later learn, is named Darwin Charleston, who is named for someone who did actually go on an expedition himself. The irony here is that most museums don’t send their curators on expeditions themselves. In fact, many museums do not actively go looking for new artifacts anymore, unless they are brand new themselves or they have an interest in a specific item.

Art museums tend to be the exception to a lot of the things in New Museology, which focuses more on everything but art museums for reasons that would need a separate post to explain. This is mostly because the backrooms of museums are overflowing with items that will never go on display, and rarely have the space to take in anything new without deaccessioning an item.

However, these museums are all brand new and looking to be filled to the brim. You send your own curators, and it feels much more like when museums were new and potentially much more problematic. There is a twist on this in Two Point County, which I will touch on in the next point. Altogether, however, it is a fun little sidequest that your NPC’s have to complete in order to fill up the museum, and one that tends to be much, much easier than it is now.

Exhibits & Working With Other Cultures

Passwater Cove’s final moments bring the Wetlanteans back.

That potentially problematic bit has to do with the tragic history of artifacts being outright stolen from cultures that, at the time, couldn’t say no. And most museums, notably the British Museum, have a long history of saying no when asked to give those things back. In America, it usually means indigenous artifacts that were taken or uncovered from the time Europe started colonizing the continent until the present day. Nowadays, there is a set of rules that, in theory, force museums to maintain communication with indigenous groups when they are in possession of their items, but this is not always as simple as it seems.

But there is a great twist on the subject in Two Point Museum. On nearly every map, you, the curator, work directly with the local cultures to form the exhibits using the artifacts that they help you find. It is a museum for the people you are hoping to bring in. For instance, in Passwater Cove, you are working directly with the Wetlanteans to bridge the gap between the land and water people by displaying their artifacts with dignity (as much dignity as you can in a satirical game).

In Pebberley Heights, you do much the same with a variety of different people groups that have spread out across space, and the plot of that entire museum is to bring them all together to uncover the mystery of the astral anomalies that you find. It’s oddly heartwarming in a game that tends to be chaotic and satirical 99% of the time. The only place where that doesn’t seem to be the case is Wailon Lodge, the ghost museum where you do have to openly fight the ghosts and put them on display.

All four cultural groups represented in the Space Museum in Pebberley Heights.

Now, I might be reading a lot into that, but it does seem like an oddly poignant point for them to have you, the curator, quell the resistance of the past, cage it, and put it on display as an exhibition. These ghosts are quite aggressive, but I did find myself raising an eyebrow as I thought a little too hard about it.

New Museology does stress working closely with both academics and the cultural groups who have a stake in the matter with exhibits, and, despite the ghosts, the museums in a zany, satirical world, have done a much better job than museums in ours continue to in the year 2025, which is saying something.

Designing The Museum

Grouping objects by type in Two Point Museum - an example of the British Method of exhibit design.

Lastly, there are a lot of theories about how museums should be designed, including a schism between England and the US methods, and I don’t want to dive too deep into design theory, but I will do my best to summarize a few points I noticed.

First, the objects come before the guests. In this case, guests are repeatedly told by the announcer that it doesn’t matter if they’re comfortable or not. This includes temperature comfort and how “fun” an exhibit is. In the past, Two Point games emphasized temperature comfort heavily for the people, so it’s a drastic change, and one that favors preserving the objects over the people. This is definitely the case in real life as well, as many artifacts will just crumble or end up destroyed in the wrong environment as well.

Second, while the individual exhibits “knowledge” and “buzz” (or attractiveness) is a big hitter for many guests, others need things to be entertaining. The museum world can moan and groan all day about how much they don’t want to be seen as amusement parks, but the truth is that many people view museums as boring, and finding ways to spice it up, such as in Two Point Museum’s interactive exhibits, without compromising the ethics of the museum is important.

The Relic River interactive exhibit in the game, for example, is something real prehistory or geology-focused institutions include, where you can “pan” for gold or uncover a load of polished rocks (something that definitely excited me as a child). It’s a balancing act. Too many interactive exhibits will be distracting, unless you are more of a science center, and too few will leave guests bored. And I like that the game has a bit of that.

One of my Relic River exhibits.

Third, and last (at least for now), is the design of the exhibits themselves, how they benefit from being near other exhibits in their subcategory, and how they like to be well-decorated. This is a good example of the difference between exhibit design methods, as the British method (the Pitt Rivers Museum being the most clear example) tends to group exhibits by type, rather than theme. For instance, all of the spears might be grouped together, regardless of culture.

The American museums tend to group things by culture of origin, so all of the things, regardless of type, from say, an Inuit background might be grouped together, even if there are other spears elsewhere in the museum. In the game, it leans more British, understandably, in the example in the image above of all the amber exhibits being grouped. And, for example, the Snowy and Fantasy bones are still considered to be Dinosaur Bones and want to be grouped that way, despite being from very different cultures and eras than the rest of the Dinosaur Bones. However, there is also a sense of that “theming by culture” specifically in the Space Museum.

Wrapping Up

I adore this game, and could keep writing a much longer essay, but I’ll cut it off for now. I haven’t even touched on the aquarium business too much, nor the difference between all the different types of museums, so maybe that will be for another day. In the meantime, I think Two Point Studios have done a great job, and I have already leapt into the new Fantasy Finds DLC with abandon. Museums are such a complex and often controversial subject, and they didn’t really shy away from that in this game. It’s fun, scratches the itch of the old Roller Coaster and Zoo Tycoon games for me, and still manages to showcase a plethora of museum theory in a very approachable way.

And the museums in Two Point County, as in real life, are indeed haunted by the ghosts of the past.