Two Point Campus Interview: We talk Two Point expanded universe and silliness with Studio Director and co-creator Mark Webley

Two Point Campus is the sequel to 2018’s slapstick, silly, business simulator game, Two Point Hospital. Which is the spiritual successor itself to the 1997 classic hospital sim game Theme hospital which was also made by some of Two Point Studios’ co-creators Mark Webley and Gary Carr.

We sat down with industry legend, Studio Directors and one of the founders of Two Point Studios Mark Webley and Lead Designer Lewis Brundish to talk about their new business sim game Two Point Campus.

In Two Point Campus, you’re job isn’t only the running of your quality educational institute but also the welfare of your students as happier students work harder and get better grades which helps you rake in the cash.

Could you tell us very, basically What Two Point Campus is?

Mark Webley

We don’t know!

Lewis Brundish

Two Point Campus is a university simulator where your goal is to shape the lives of the students of your county, either through improving their social lives and their happiness, improving their grades and their academia or ideally both at once.

It’s also very silly. Yeah, I think you could just say Two Point Campus is very silly.

For those who think that this is just Two Point Hospital again, how is TPC different?

Lewis Brundish

It’s very different. Obviously, it shares a ton of DNA with TPH you know, we hope if your fan of Hospital, you’re gonna feel right at home here.

But the game plays very differently. I’d say the core root of that really is the fact that in Hospital, your job is to cure the patients, but they are very kind of transient, disposable, you know, these people turn up and you’re gonna cure them, or they’re gonna die. And I kind of fodder that they’re in and out. Whereas the focus of Campus is really a lot more on the lives of these people.

They come in, and they’re going to be with you for three years, maybe four years, they’re gonna live there, they’ve got bedrooms, they’ve got places to eat, they’ve got you know, they can find love and romance, you can put on parties for them.

So you’re really in it for the long haul. And that fundamental element ripples out throughout all the other systems.

Mark Webley

The business management sim bit is there, with education as the backdrop to our business here. But then, as Lewis says, you’re nurturing and caring for people, is a completely new dimension.

There’s also the ability, for players to create their own campus, including inside buildings or outside buildings.

Some of our courses are like jousting and knight school and archaeology, are et outside. It was important for us to be able to let the player build the buildings, and put the flowers and stuff there if they want to.

Because if they don’t, and some players don’t, some players just buy a new plot of land, and select, you know, there’s a building, if you want it, it will cost you a bit more the building, the builders, is a design and build or you just build it yourself.

Lewis Brundish

We know that hospital had fans who are in a very kind of hardcore business sim-type things. And we also had fans who are much more casual and creative and expressive.

And with Campus, we’ve tried to kind of expand in both directions and make sure that there’s a lot of scope to play in whichever way you want and the game supports that.

And why did you choose to set the sequel in a university?

Mark Webley

We are an independent studio. So, our paychecks were coming from our milestones. So before we finished Hospital and we had to think of what we were going to do next.

There were several ideas, some still in the filing cabinet somewhere, but the idea of your school/college campus was just the one that everyone just kept coming back to.

We knew that this is the fountain of all inspiration for us and the fact that everyone was going to or what about this? What about that, there’s so much to draw from.

Lewis Brundish

It contains so many things within it because the students’ archetypes who arrived could be going off to jobs in all kinds of other Two Point institutions, you know, so we can do a lot in one game with this.

Mark Webley

I think if you can find a boring subject, it makes quite a good topic for us. Gary the other studio director, says if it makes a good sitcom, it would probably make a good Two Point game.

There’s shows like Fresh Meat and there are even films like Greece. They’re still at college and university, but they’re nothing like any school or university that anyone’s been to. So there’s your inspiration. Of course, everyone else’s experiences at university also added to that.

What other institutions could Two Point tackle in the future Two Point Police Force, Two Point Newspaper, or game development? do you work that far ahead?

Mark Webley

Absolutely. I think that there are all those sorts of things that you just name three, could possibly be those things.

But in fact, Two Point Precinct was one of the ideas that we kind of thought of along with Two Point Campus, and that was one of the ones that were in the mix. And Campus just felt more exciting.

Lewis Brundish

I think, with the idea that Two Point Studios is creating and fleshing out Two Point County as a location with each game that we make.

So there are even little crossovers and if you’re very familiar with Hospital, then some of the characters, maybe some of you know some things that happened on campus and we’re trying to build out this world.

So yeah, anything is possible, really, including those you listed.

Mark Webley

And you don’t get a royalty.

What were some of your inspirations for Two Point Campus? Other than obviously, hospital?

Lewis Brundish

Actually, people do ask “what’s your design process behind the courses and things like that?” and the honest truth is, we sit around making silly puns and cracking jokes.

And if something makes us laugh, we will go Oh, yeah. So my favourite example is Knight school then that’s how a course starts.

So inspiration is really whatever makes us laugh. And there’s also a nice Two Point trick of taking something that’s a bit mundane and making it crazy.

Because the other thing with settings is if everything was too crazy, it wouldn’t feel like a functioning hospital or like a university.

So as well as some of the zany courses there’s is also a trip to taking something quite expected and quite mundane and going “Okay, but if that was in Two Point County, What would the silliness be?”

I think, British comedy sensibilities as a whole, are quite a big inspiration to everything. I think nearly everything starts with a joke. In everything starts with what would be the silliest, most ridiculous.

The Two Point universe has fun, irreverent and silly humour. Does that make it easier to develop for or harder?

Mark Webley

I think it’s something we don’t really think about, well, I think if you try and be funny, you’ve got to be really good to pull it off.

Lewis Brundish

I think it helps that our games are kind of open, for you to play at your own pace.

I think if we were trying to tell a story in a narrative direction and go Joke, joke, joke joke, and some of those didn’t land, it wouldn’t be funny.

Whereas we tried to just create this environment where rather funny things happening all over the place.

Mark Webley

And just not taking itself too seriously, that’s probably the ethos there rather than going okay. Can we make this a bit funnier? And Harry does a great job of writing as well.

Lewis Brundish

I think in answer to your question about whether it’s easier or harder to develop for, I think I’m gonna say on the easy side.

It’s quite liberating that you never hit a dead end, where logic is preventing you from continuing, right? Because as long as you can think of a way of it being funny, you can invent your way out of any situation.

Mark Webley

I guess the silliness allows you to do in Hospital, particularly, you kind of go well, that’s not how hospitals run.

Lewis Brundish

We were looking at people arriving at the campus, where some people walk out of the subway, and some people come out of cars and buses.

We were fixing a bug where it was taking too long for people to arrive and one of the things we were saying was, well, we could just have 50 of them pour out of one car because we have the license to do that if we got like the clown students for example.

So yeah, it does give us a license to be a bit more creative with our solutions.

Two Point games have a very distinctive look and design. Can you tell me how that came about?

Mark Webley

Yeah. Well, the interesting thing is back in the days of Bullfrog, we were just on the cusp of 3D games, and we’ve done Theme Park as little sprites and then some of the teams started using 3D and Gary, the other studio director, who’s an artist back then, he couldn’t do 3D.

So we thought, okay, well, let’s stick with sprites. And so it was built as an isometric game. But years later, you kind of look back on those early 3D games and they really look awful.

In the day, they were cutting edge and Theme Hospitals still looks okay. So Gary and Mark said, “we’ve got to have something that that isn’t going to age and it needs to look handcrafted.”

We kind of ended up with something that’s a bit Aardman-like, it’s a bit plasticine looking. So that’s where that came from.

Because you can still buy Theme Hospital 25 years later and play it. We kind of imagined wouldn’t it be great if it felt good play this game in 25 years, and it doesn’t look awful.

Lewis Brundish

I had that exact conversation with Mark Smart, the Art Director the other day.

We’re trying to be timeless kind of, I guess almost the modern equivalent of sprite art, right? For 3D games is like, yeah, it’s just this nice, clean, simple but unique.

And it’s very obvious that like, we are not trying to compete with Uncharted here, right that well, in that in that arena.

Mark Webley

I think the other thing is, as we’ve kind of often said, our game is, you know, a sum of its parts. If you’re, looking at Campus or Hospital, things can get very busy. So keeping the things is quite simple, is a lot easier to see.

Lewis Brundish

Another strength is if you zoom right in on an individual student, we want you to see their facial expressions and their animations and care about what they’re doing.

But then when you pull out and you can see the entire campus all needs to be readable. So yeah, so yeah, again, this level of fidelity and colour and simplicity really helped.

Have there been any thoughts on making Two Point Hospital and Two Point Campus integrate with each other?

Mark Webley

I think so. I think as we kind of establish Two Point County more, these are the same little people have been educated in Two Point County in may end up in Hospital. Maybe one day we’ll be able to train the doctors of Two Point Hospital in to put on Campus. I think so. I think we’ve kind of imagined this kind of world. We’ve only got one game out, maybe when we’ve got two or three.

Lewis Brundish

This is going to happen hopefully more we are certainly laying the groundwork. I think I mentioned earlier that if you play Campus as a fan of Hospital, you should pick up on several returning cameos or there’s a medical room on campus, maybe you’ll recognize some of the things that people come down with and things like that. So we are establishing those links where that goes I don’t know yet but it’s on our minds. Yeah, definitely.

Two Point Campus is due to release August 9 2022 for PC, Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch.