Two Point Museum is a management simulator game created by Two Point Studios. While the new expansion, “Two Point Museum: Zooseum,” still involves curating relics of the past, it now focuses on animals. As the overseer and head zookeeper on Nintendo Switch 2, playing Two Point Museum: Zooseum gave me a new appreciation for wildlife conservationists.

I’m no Attenborough, but I’ve always loved animals, and Two Point Museum: Zooseum has plenty. Most of the animals seem made up, but caring for these critters is still enjoyable. The DLC introduces a new location, Silverbottom Park. The extremely wealthy animal enthusiast, Wiggy Silverbottom, opens his stately manor for use as an animal sanctuary. Here, you take over to transform the manor from an empty building to a thriving utopia, filled with guests and animals.

The DLC adds over 40 wildlife exhibits to populate the grounds, including terrariums filled with small critters and amphibians, varying bird enclosures, mammals and more. During the campaign, players are tasked with building up the “zoo” as a viable attraction for guests, all while being a centre for animal rehabilitation, which is quite the undertaking. Much like the base game, players will need to follow the base formula of building up the museum while sending out expedition teams to seek out more creatures with the new staff type, “Wildlife Expert’ being paramount to success. The new exploration map, Farflung Isles, offers up a bounty of biomes, abundant in animals to find. While players don’t get to experience the safaris firsthand, there is a certain satisfaction in seeing what the team find upon their return.

Where the real satisfaction lies is in putting it all together. As a management sim, the campaign sets the ultimate goal of achieving the elusive five-star rating on the Zooseum, exactly like the original game. The unique spin of adding live creatures to balance on the already hectic day-to-day runnings presents enough of a challenge to keep players on the lookout constantly, and that’s what made Two Point Museum: Zooseum so addictive; there was always more to see and more to do.

The DLC is just as witty and wonderful as the base game, with an isometric view of the whole grounds. I was able to get a bird’s eye view of everything, everywhere, and all at once, and it works surprisingly well.

While in some management sims, I feel like my attention has to be always on keeping everyone in line, but the employees at the zoo are quite self-sufficient. This allows more time to watch and appreciate guests interacting with exhibits, engage with various new decor, and see the joy or discomfort on their faces in the process, which was quite entertaining to observe.

Completing objectives, which aren’t overly involved but interesting enough to keep natural progression going for me, though for other gamers, it might be overwhelming to balance all tasks. But a well-managed sanctuary makes the art of maintaining animal and guest satisfaction quite pleasant.

The upbeat music and ever-present public announcer of “Two-Point Radio” provide plenty of context cues to make sure players don’t miss any cues for a poop clean-up or a heads-up that a VIP will be visiting, which I very much appreciated that notifications weren’t limited to text boxes and had much more personality than most sims I’ve played.

As a first-time Two Point Museum player, I needed to reach the first star in the base game’s starter area, Memento Mile, by building up the run-of-the-mill, history-filled museum, but knowing how to start makes Zooseum an easy adjustment.

There are some additional mechanics added to the new campaign in Silverbottom Park, but it’s quite quick to adapt to. There was one point where I had to return to Memento Mile to progress through the Zooseum campaign, but Two Point Museum is so enjoyable that a quick trip back to unlock tours (and a change of pace) was thoroughly enjoyable.

Later, the ability to unlock additional “lots” to expand the Zooseum gives even more wiggle room to curate exhibits to consistent themes or map out by regions, which will be needed when you have the springy-necked Spyglass Giraffe and Zig-Zebras to house down, plus maintaining the smaller habitats containing Bumblebirds, Beardy Lizards and the like – all more wacky and wonderful than the next.

The evolution of my Zooseum from nothing into a home away from home for wildlife feels so rewarding and incredibly immersive. As a taster, Sandbox Mode is a nice alternative to the campaign, allowing you to play with the new content without the constraints of campaign progression and adds more replayability to test out different layouts.

There were no performance issues encountered, even with a large array of guests and animals present and load times were mostly quick. Two Point Museum looks great in either handheld or docked mode, but to really appreciate the Zooseum, docked mode is preferable. I was able to zoom all the way in handheld mode, down to seeing expressions on each guest’s or animal’s faces, but it was much more glorious on the big screen.

Handheld is perfect for lazy days in bed or on the go. At times, the menus and UI can be a chore to navigate, though a lesser gripe. However, both are well-suited for a controller-based game, rather than the point-and-click of a mouse.

Two Point Museum: Zooseum is a pleasant, chill management sim that doesn’t take itself too seriously, which is a nice change of pace from the usual civilisation, survival, or city sims ever-present in gaming. For fans of the genre, it’s worth purchasing the DLC for oodles of new content, a new campaign, a new map and a new lease on life for all creatures great and small. 

Written by: Yasmin Noble