Two Point Campus: Space Academy Review: Set Phasers to Fun!
You’ve revitalized every campus. Turned each one into a potpourri of bizarre courses, bedraggled students and cult-like behavior (praise the Orb!). Where do you go from there?
Well, space. Obviously.
It’s in games like Two Point Campus where add-ons feel like a no-brainer, and Two Point Campus: Space Academy is the perfect next step for "studentkind." As the game’s first major DLC, Space Academy adds three new campus locations, six new courses and classrooms and a selection of space-themed decor. With satirical inspiration so clearly drawn from sci-fi pop culture, the new content speaks directly to the nerd within.
Hopping into the first campus, Universe City, we’re met by our NPC guide, Captain Cushion. Dressed in a yellow uniform, with a golden emblem pinned to his chest, our James T. Kirk-wannabe is played by fictional Two Point County actor Roderick Cushion. With his help, players are tasked to inspire a new generation of students to take up the many weird and wonderful courses at Two Point Space Academy.
Our first task is to establish two new courses at Universe City: Astrology and Cosmic Expansion. Like the base game, you’ll need to construct specific rooms and fill them with the required items. In this case we need an Anti–Gravity Chamber equipped with an Anti-Gravity Simulator, and a Rocket Lab placed outside and centered around a Rocket Project. You’ll still need to hire Teachers, with correct qualifications, and Assistants, to run the Library and extra-curricular activities. But the true unsung heroes of this expansion are the trusty Janitors, who have been given an additional role to play outside of mopping up the occasional student disgrace.
Space Rocks will periodically fall from the sky. Big, bright and questionably radioactive. It’s the Janitor’s job to harvest them, earning you some cash and even a rare cosmic artifact or two. All Janitors can clear them away, but those with the special Space Rock Mining qualification can harvest them even faster than their unskilled counterparts.
While this makes for an easy cash grab in Universe City, they fall a little too frequently. Almost to the point of being an annoyance. A larger number will fall from the sky as you expand the campus. There’s a good chance you’ll end up with an army of Janitors scattered across the map frantically clearing away space debris, leaving everything else to fall into disrepair.
It’s not super important to clean up every rock in Universe City. They’ll disappear after a few minutes and you can even tell your Janitors to ignore the rocks altogether. Though in the expansion’s second level, Cape Shrapnull, you’re going to want to clear them away as soon as you can. Leaving the glowing, extra-terrestrial material lying around is a sure-fire way to get your students sick, putting strain on your (likely underfunded) health services.
Cape Shrapnull changes things up in other ways. The overall objective here is to generate “Space Buzz” on campus. This means your students need to be kept as entertained as possible, in order for you to earn some extra funding. Luckily, you can host the ultimate geeky gathering right in the Student Union: sci-fi conventions.
The expansion’s third level, Delta-Rye, is where it’s all at, though. This time we’re in space, setting up campus on a giant cheesy Space Rock capable of sustaining student life. With an interplanetary setting, creepy alien students and a campus-funded space shuttle, the best galactic aesthetics have truly been saved for last. Like the previous levels, things can get hectic fast. Enemy Space Knights and radioactive rocks being the biggest burden on your campus custodians. Thankfully, with the campus situated on the giant Space Rock, there’s plenty of natural, cheesy resources ripe for harvesting. The new Creamatorium course will put your students to work, earning you income through space mining. In return, they’re blessed with the greatest resource of all: knowledge!
Exploitation? Never heard of her.
Two Point Campus: Space Academy doesn’t stray too far from its base game formula. Once you’ve learned the ins and outs of the standard campuses, you’ll have no trouble getting to grips with the new ones. It essentially offers you more of the same, with a few extra tweaks and items. But why fix what’s not broken? Playing through the extra levels is a fun time, but the true joy comes through utilizing all of the new features in Sandbox Mode. I speak to my fellow small-time Trekkies here: It’s the closest we’ll get to running our own Starfleet Academy.
If you connected with Two Point Campus but thought, “Y’know, it just needs more aliens” then Space Academy is a logical choice. On the flip side, it offers little outside of the space aesthetic to make it a stand out expansion. But at $10, it’s a small price to pay to guide the youth of today to cosmic academic greatness, or crush their ambitions entirely. After all, in space, no one can hear you dream.
DBLTAP Rating: B+
Two Point Campus: Space Academy, developed by Two Point Studios and published by SEGA, is available on Dec. 6 for PC PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and on Dec. 12 for Nintendo Switch.
Need more guidance? Check out our review of the base game, Two Point Campus.
DBLTAP was provided with a copy of Two Point Campus: Space Academy for review by its publisher, SEGA.