I always wanted to be a doctor, but I never got to be one. Thanks to Two Point Hospital, I get to be much more. Not only do I get to treat various diseases, but I also get to build a hospital from scratch. Of course, it’s just a game and nothing compared to a real-life experience. Yet, you’ll be hugely engrossed in hospital management that you’ll forget it isn’t real life.

Your job is to build a world-class hospital right from the start, manage strange illnesses, and expand the hospital business across the county. In addition, you’ll have to handle staff that might bring your hospital to nothing if you leave them alone. 

It takes us back to the days we all enjoyed ‘Theme Hospital.’

Electronic Arts released Theme Hospital in 1997, and it instantly became a hit. Riding on the nostalgia of hospitals, it went on to become a fans’ favorite. What Two Point Hospital does is to take us down that path again, but in a more robust and engaging way. The scornful humor is still there but brilliantly immersed in a modern world – quite different from the 90s. 

The game is easy to wrap one’s head around. Your first job is to build a hospital and ensure it stays running. The second job is to ensure the hospital does what every other hospital does – save lives. To do that, you have to treat illnesses, manage hospital staff, stay in the good books of health inspectors, and improve your earnings.

In Two Points Hospital, things can go wrong very quickly if you don’t handle things well. If you don’t manage your staff correctly, you’ll be firing more than you can afford. At least, that’s not as bad as what happens when you don’t care for patients. They will die, and you’ll have to deal with their ghosts all around the hospital. 

Strange illnesses: the hallmark of your medical practice

Every doctor expects to deal with some unusual medical conditions once in a while. But in this game, that’s going to be the norm. Caring for a patient begins from the very first second they step into the hospital building. Once a patient walks in, the receptionist greets and welcomes them. They wait to see the General Practitioner for examination and likely diagnosis.

Often, the patients will have to visit other diagnosis rooms in the hospitals for further tests. It all depends on how well you’ve built the hospital and the facilities available. The more facilities you have, the more pathologies you’re able to diagnose. Once the patient’s diagnosis is confirmed, they head to a treatment room to get them back in their right physiological state.

Now, your success in this game depends on how efficient this patient management flow is. If lapses slow things down or make diagnosis and treatment difficult, you have to fix them. The fixing could involve fire some staff and hiring others or entail buying new hospital equipment. At every point in time, you have to keep your eyes on the patient’s happiness level. Besides the diagnosis and treatment of the illness, other factors can affect a patient’s happiness level. For example, when the hospital’s room temperature is either too high or low for them, their happiness can begin to drop. So, you’ll have to address that. 

You also have to provide food and drinks for your patients. Also, you have to consider if they have enough space to sit down and enough attractions like pictures and greenery to engage them. When these vital things are missing, the patient could get very unhappy and leave the hospital. So, putting everything in place is the only way not to lose the money you need to keep the hospital running. Not to worry, the game is replete with tips to guide you through gameplay and help you avoid costly mistakes.

Do you stop after one masterpiece of a hospital? 

You started from point zero. Now, you’re at 100. Do you move on to develop another hospital project, or do you continue to milk massive revenue from the existing one? First, it’s important to state that no matter how complete a hospital looks, there’ll always be something else to do. So, once you get to 100, you can aim for 150. However, moving to other hospitals opens you up to new opportunities and challenges. That’s one of the many beauties of the game. 

As you move through the game, the challenges become even more intriguing. You may have to run a badly-run hospital with quacks as doctors or lead a hospital through a ravaging epidemic. As much as your management skills need to be exceptional, you also need to be innovative. Some problems require that you go out and create a novel solution for them. Also, you’ll do well to expect things like earthquakes that you can’t plan enough for.

In all of the catastrophes that might occur or even in the regular day-to-day grind, humor is never missing. Without a doubt, the game’s irreverent humor that’s ingrained in every dialogue or conversation is a major highlight. The humor may take a shade when ghosts of dead patients start to turn the hospital upside down. If you have a well-trained janitor that can quickly deal with them, you don’t have so much to worry about.

Verdict

It’s evident that Two Point Studios put a lot of thought and work into this game. The controls, visuals, and text are all impressive. Even more imposing is how entertaining the game is. It’s almost impossible not to have an enjoyable gameplay every time you launch Two Point Hospital. While it has several games of the same theme before it, it stands out as a brilliant introduction to the scene. To put it briefly, Two Point Hospital is fun and addictive.