January is Get Organized Month! - Cole Hardware Cole Hardware

Student years are considered by some to be the best episodes of their lives, full of romance and adventure. In Two Point Campus, players have the opportunity to make teens happy to learn before they head off into the harsh adult life. They do not want to pore over books and endlessly listen to boring lectures - they need to make sure that for three years they combine business with pleasure and leave the walls of the alma mater with the best memories. 

As in the studio's last Y8 game, Two Point Hospital, we get empty buildings at our disposal and build busy locations out of nothing. If there it was necessary to take care of patients, then here we create conditions for mischievous students of colleges and universities. Of course, teachers and attendants are no less important, but a lot depends on the mood of students - from the prestige of educational institutions to the amount of money they earn. 

It all starts simply - the lecture hall has already been built, we just have to add everything else. Create an office where they will teach, arrange toilets and showers, and also build a “dormitory” somewhere in the corner of the building, where students will change clothes and sleep. Completing the tasks at the first level is simple: we add a library so that the students get smarter, we build a room for the staff, where tired from work will rest, and so on.

When we earn one star in the first college, we can continue its development or return to the world map and select the next location, of which there are 12. In the second case, the most interesting thing happens - Two Point Campus begins to grow non-stop with mechanics. Half-empty old offices are no longer good, interaction with new employees is no longer limited to pressing one button, and teenagers are becoming more demanding, and they are increasingly setting conditions, and not you decide what is best for them.

If at first there is only one direction in colleges (for example, science or cooking), then in the later stages and when returning to the old ones, more classrooms need to be created, and at the same time new teachers should be hired. It is not always possible to find the ideal candidate, but you can “blind” him - take the first one that comes across and send him for training so that he becomes a master of all trades. The same with the attendants - an ordinary cleaner, who is only able to sweep the floor and sometimes fix something, will be able to learn how to upgrade objects in the classrooms. Lectures that the teacher reads at the fashionable podium are easier to digest!

Lagging students can be sent for additional consultations - but here a teacher is also desirable with a perk that allows you to quickly drill information into your brain. And if he is also able to motivate teenagers, then it’s generally wonderful. Well, students want more and more decorations and entertainment - give them a DJ set, then a party at the bar, then a big pink bed in the "dorm", then a smoothie stand.

Thanks to the endless stream of tasks at Two Point Campus , you disappear for several hours a day and forget about time. Let's take the most banal element - a student lounge. Initially, the Y8 game recommends creating a tiny room where you can put a wardrobe and a couple of beds. Every year the number of students is growing, so that over time there is not enough space - either you are expanding, or you generally transfer the “dormitory” to another building. You increase the area, but there is too much empty space - you hang a darts board, put tables and drawers, lay carpets and glue posters. It all affects the parameters: something increases the attractiveness of the room, and something allows teenagers to get closer and make friends.

You do this procedure with all classrooms and halls: you hang sanitizers, put plants in pots, decorate the corridors ... All to ensure that the mood of teachers and students is always good. So that they do not wander from corner to corner, always have access to the necessary things, can easily get to the toilet if necessary, or spend time in front of the slot machine. All people have personal goals: someone wants to take part in a party, someone wants to see a 3D printer or a stylish carpet in the class. The quick message system allows you to open a list of these needs with one click and make your dreams come true.

Some wishes can only be fulfilled if you have kudosh, a local currency that allows you to buy many cosmetic items. There are several sources of income: fulfilling so-called career goals (it happens by itself), completing the next academic year, receiving awards for the best teacher or the best college... It’s not that much of a currency, so it’s always a shame to refuse a student to buy some kind of statue or a funny carpet from -for the lack of "kudoshey", but what to do - it will be interrupted.

What's most exciting about Two Point Campus is the uniqueness of each map. There is a knight's school here, where all students wear armor, and competitors periodically send their warriors to spoil your property. There is a school of magic, where students arrange duels with each other and brew potions, there is a school of spies - everything is tied to creating gadgets and passing tests. Locations are completely different in atmosphere, even when the educational institution grows to a large size and the number of available disciplines increases.

Interest in the Y8 game does not fade away, and when you return after a long absence in some region, the impressions remain vivid. Of course, it's a little tiring to start each map almost from scratch: arrange toilets, beds and other rubbish, do long research, train staff, and so on. But sooner or later you go through this stage, after which the gameplay reveals itself better and better - you start to follow every little thing and pause the game more often in order to have time to respond to the emergence of new tasks and requirements.

The developers are more or less successful in introducing the player to the basic mechanics, so even if the Two Point Hospital passed by you, you will not feel lost. However, many elements remain without comments and hints, which is why you either activate mechanics at random, or you don’t know at all what to do to improve the result. Only a few hours later I saw on the menu that teachers can be sent on vacation. But how this system works, whether it helps to restore their energy and why the corresponding button becomes active after the menu is reopened is not clear.

More questions for students. Although you pay equal attention to everyone, some do not want to study at all and get low grades, being on the verge of elimination. Extra classes do not help make them smarter; you cannot drag them into the library by force. Maybe they should be kicked out altogether, since there is such a function? Nobody explains.

Among the tasks are those that require achieving a certain indicator of the attractiveness of the institution, the level of hygiene or student happiness. If the first one is easy to deal with, then the rest are difficult. Even if you hang sanitizers everywhere and hire a bunch of cleaners, dirt still accumulates somewhere, and I could not see clues that would hint at what the problem was. The mood of students is also not so easy to raise, even if you constantly arrange parties for them, even put slot machines.

However, all this does not prevent you from getting great pleasure from the Y8 game - the complexity here is not so high that you have to suffer because of some gameplay mechanics. It is enough to be smart about the construction of the first buildings - when there is really nothing to earn and you have to rely only on start-up capital, every penny is important. You may even have to go into the red for a while - if you are sure that your students will soon show good results and start giving bonus money.

When an educational institution starts to make a profit, the mood of the guys is quite good, and all the necessary rooms are not only created, but also furnished, Two Point Campus offers an insanely exciting and even meditative gameplay. You start to use the time acceleration button a little less often, you pay a little more attention to the decorations of the cabinets, and do not hang posters all in a row, just to increase the attractiveness. Well, every time it's nice to see how your pupils pass exams after three years and go on a free voyage, and green students constantly come to their place, for whom all conditions have already been created.

 Two Point Campus is suitable for both Tycoon fans and beginners who have not played anything like this for a long time. With a variety of themes at each level and a large number of gameplay mechanics, the Y8 game is so addictive that you lose track of time and want to make every college the best. For Game Pass subscribers, this is an especially luxurious gift, and the controls on Xbox are almost unremarkable. As soon as you start to somehow understand everything, it becomes very difficult to break away.

Pros: a dozen different locations with their own disciplines and unique surroundings in each; a lot of mechanics, but not enough to cause a headache; the tutorial does a good job of teaching you the basics of gameplay; charming visual style.

Cons: some mechanics are not explained well enough, and some of them are generally stumbled upon by accident; there is no translation into Russian.