Two Point Museum's Arty-Facts DLC lets you curate creativity into cash flow
The Arty-Facts DLC brings interesting new gameplay in its latest biome for Two Point Museum.
by TJ Denzer · ShacknewsEvery single chance to go back to Two Point Museum always results in dozens of hours of amusing museum curation, and the new Arty-Facts DLC is no exception. I was wondering how Two Point Studios would impress me after the fun I had in the Zooseum DLC, and it turns out it’s by leaning into what Two Point Museum does best: adding a fun new biome to the mix with its own rules that can then be mixed into the rest of this toy box. Arty-Facts is all about evoking emotions from your visitors through your displayed art, and by the time I was done, the emotion I felt most was joy.
Bringing creative culture to Two Point County
The Arty-Facts DLC presents a whole host of new features packed into a new biome that teaches you the ropes. There are tons of new exhibits, a new way to create them, and various mechanics to be considerate of as you arrange them. Just make sure that you’ve made some progress on the base game to prepare. It’s suggested you get past the first act. I’d say level up the original museum, Momento Mile, to at least 3 stars. That way you won’t have to leave the Arty-Facts content until you’re good and ready to do so.
Undee Docks will be your main location for Arty-Facts. It presents a wealth of space with which to create your new gallery. You just need the expertise and finds to make it shine. Arty-Facts splits exhibit acquisition into two processes. You’ll still be able to do expeditions to various Points of Interest and discover famous artwork from them that you can bring back to your museum. However, you can also have your experts create artwork in the new Art Studio room. There are plenty of unique aspects to both, but sometimes your exhibits get better hype out of being next to a famous work or a regular piece, so having a good mix of both is important for a few reasons.
One such reason is that every art exhibit evokes one or more of several emotions. For instance, the Two Point Gothic painting (a loving parody of American Gothic) will evoke romance and disgust. There are a few reasons to care about that. For one, arranging paintings with other paintings that evoke different emotions often provides bonuses to their overall hype. Those emotions aren’t just cosmetic. They influence your guests in different ways. Romance, for example, pushes them to take better care of your museum environment’s cleanliness on their own. On the flipside, disgust will make them less reactive to full trash cans, litter, and dirty bathrooms. Meanwhile, Rage makes guests overlook high prices. In fact, one of the game’s tips is to put Rage exhibits next to the gift shop so you can rake in the dough, which I find exceptionally cheeky and fun.
You’re not just collecting paintings either. As you grow your art museum and its capabilities, you’ll also collect different kinds of art beyond paintings, including sculptures and interactive art installments. Want a farting version of The Thinker known as The Stinker? It’s here, as well as many other silly takes on ancient and modern art of the world. You’ll even get the Culture Society sending you high-value pieces to demo in your gallery, which will obviously include watching for pilfering punks that might make off with it. As you grow, so does the threat, and combatting thieves while assembling a glorious gallery of artistic culture is an engaging endeavor.
Turning uncultured swine into cultured swine
Arty-Facts has so many new little pieces and they add another wonderful layer to the overall thing that is Two Point Museum. This DLC is going to be quite fun in the sandbox mode because of the way you can manipulate guests with the emotions of your art, but it’s also just a fantastic time arranging a proper art gallery with all of the eccentricities that come with that. At all points, I was giddy to see what my art experts would find or come up with, but that’s just step one. The min-max obsessed will get a kick out of finding the right placement to get the emotions you want out of guests and maximize efficiency, especially on tour routes. Even if you’re not so stats-focused, Arty-Facts will test your ability to craft a compelling collection in captivating capacity. It’s another cool way to get museum goers to drop their cash in your donation boxes.
These impressions are based on an early PC build provided by the publisher. The Two Point Museum Arty-Facts DLC launches on May 7 on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5, with a Nintendo Switch 2 release to follow at a later date.
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