Two Point Chaos

When I paid $31.99 for Two Point Hospital, I wasn't really sure how much gameplay I was going to get.  I have been pleasantly surprised by the fact that I'm still playing and that the game has gotten progressively harder.  The diseases have also gotten even goofier.

One part of Two Point that I'm really appreciating is that you can choose how long you want to play a certain hospital.  If your goal is to simply speed through the game, you simply have to accomplish the tasks to get to one star.  If, you're like me and are mostly a completionist, you can opt to continue playing a hospital and can work to accomplish the progressively more difficult tasks to take your hospital to the two or three star level.  Getting that third star can be a real pain--there's usually one task that is downright tough.  The tasks that I've found to be the hardest are staff morale, hospital attractiveness, and cure rate.  If you're having difficulty with staff morale try improving the prestige of the rooms in your hospital--this will give you a slight bump in morale.  The best way to improve morale is to raise the pay of your staff--shoot for the green smiley face when you're adjusting the pay slider (if you can afford it).

I found the hospital at Duckworth-Upon-Bilge to be one of the tougher scenarios.  Unlike the other hospitals in the game, Duckworth is a public hospital so you don't earn money for diagnostics, cures, or even retail.  In order to earn money, you have to complete specific tasks given to you by some Lord who acts as director.  Some tasks are relatively easy, like diagnosing five patients, while others require more time and effort, promoting a staff member or curing a certain number of patients in a specific room (it takes a long time to cure three patients in surgery).  The level gets tougher as time goes on, and getting to the coveted three star level is difficult.  The main challenge comes from the fact that as your staff grows to meet demand, the cost of your monthly payroll vastly increases.  If you can't complete those tasks in a timely manner (promoting staff gets really difficult), you will find yourself in debt and in danger of having your hospital shut down.  It took a few bankruptcies and reloads until I finally managed to get to three stars.  Some advice:  once you've accrued some reputation for your hospital, cancel any of the directors requests that are too labor intensive--a -10 reputation hit isn't going to hurt you too much.

My latest hospital was completely crazy--Grockle Bay featured a continuous stream of patients and I could barely keep up.  It felt like no matter how many GP's offices I built, that there was always a huge queue.  On top of that, there are epidemics that can break out and that spread like wildfire if you're not careful.  Epidemics require you to find the infected individuals, which seem to stand out due to some sort of strange behavior--walking like a zombie in the case of "abominable curse" or speed-walking and doing push-ups for those with "jogger's ripple"--then you have to vaccinate them.  You only get a certain number of vaccines, so you have to be attentive to the behavior of the people in your hospital.  Epidemics aren't too bad when there are a few people in your hospital, but they're downright chaotic when it is packed.

The diseases in the game have gotten even sillier than the early levels.  Some patients in Grockle Bay appeared to be completely naked, and in fact, they were.  Patients with the "emperor complex" will flood your hospital like a cartoony, naked wave.  They require treatment with a psychiatrist who must convince them of their nakedness.

A doctor works to treat a patient with Cubism.

A couple of my favorite new diseases are "8-Bitten" and "cubism."  Patients who are suffering from 8-Bitten appear on the screen as a pixelated, blurry figure and must be put through a treatment machine called a "debugger."  Patients with cubism look like Picasso's walking nightmare--a bunch of blocks crammed together into a human-like form.  To cure cubism, doctors must use a machine that extracts the cubes and the extrudes the person back into their human form.

It's very obvious when patients are suffering from 8-Bitten.

I've been having a lot of fun with Two Point, but I've also run into some possible bugs.  One of the more irritating bugs occurs when patients just stand around and don't do what they're supposed to do (like go to reception).  Usually those patients end up getting angry and storming out.  The only way I've figured out how to fix this is to pick up and move your reception desk/pod.

In my last hospital I had some problems with the fracture ward.  Patients would get up from the traction beds, stand in line near the plaster caster, and then basically be stuck.  The nurses would completely ignore them and no new patients could be admitted to the room.  If I picked up the plaster caster and moved it, the patients would leave (and usually die) and then the room would work for awhile...then it would hit the weird bottleneck again.

Patients strut their stuff if they have the "emperor complex."

If you're looking for a silly management game, Two Point Hospital is definitely good fun.  There seem to be a few bugs, but for the most part it's really stable and works well.