Two Point Museum: Arty-Facts DLC review

We are looking at a generational run of DLC here, folks. Two Point Museum’s journey began with Fantasy Finds, a good first go at an expansion with delightful exhibits that left a lot more to be desired. Then we moved on to the mammoth that was Zooseum, with its different approach to the space in which you’d house an array of bizarre creatures, and now, Arty-Facts. A much-anticipated art museum pack that feels so different from the others in terms of gameplay, where emotions created by your artwork dictate how your customers act. Each time I get to review these instalments I know I am in for a treat and that my pre-conceptions of how they do their DLC will be delightfully challenged.

This time around, we are heading to Undee Docks, where art critic Zara will guide us through how to make a state-of-the-art museum. There are two ways to populate our gallery. The first is to commission your own paintings with our recently employed art experts, or you can embark on the new expedition map, Zara’s sketchbook. In the base game, you normally locate all of your exhibits through POIs on the expedition map, but this time, you can jump back and forth to get different pieces. In your art studio, you can have your artists use emotions to create sculptures or paintings. They are normally pretty drab-looking pieces, but can be improved by spending more time creating them. Like exploring POIs, you can create shallow or deep art, which increases the exhibit quality. The other method of obtaining art is by locating famous works in Zara’s sketchbook. This was where Arty-Fact’s exhibits really shone for me as I loved seeing classics like the Mona Lisa being parodied into the Miniature Lisa, or the American Gothic painting having a cheesy grubbin in the corner. I often found the commissioned art pieces to be a bit boring, but this was made up for by the silly takes on recognizable icons.

Paintings and sculptures that can be commissioned change depending on the new emotion system. Art experts will come with one primary emotion, joy or romance, and will learn more as you take them on specific expeditions. For example, when I traveled to a dreary city, the critics learned sorrow. To get more emotions under their belt, you will be able to train them in the new skill, Emotional Intelligence. This unlocks more slots to make staff more versatile in what pieces they can make. Sculptures will also require materials to build, harkening back to the gameplay of Bungal Wastelands. You can sculpt using clay, copper, or other materials, which can be farmed in specific POIs, and thankfully, each trip gives you more than enough to sculpt two or more pieces. This makes it so you aren’t farming for them constantly. It felt nice to stop and think about what exhibits I wanted to be created in the art studio, instead of the usual spamming POIs to get undiscovered exhibits. Spamming is also discouraged by the artist’s cooldown period. Once they have created a piece of art, you need to wait to use them again. However, if I got bored with all that, I could simply hop into Zara’s Sketchbook and locate some rare pieces instead.

Once you have your exhibits displayed, you will start to see the benefits of the emotions tied to each piece. Each one grants buffs to visitors and can alter how they interact with your museum. My favourite one was the negative emotion anger, which, when experienced by a visitor, would negate it when experiencing the rest of the museum. It apparently seems to raise their tolerance as they are less likely to get angry at price rises in the gift shop. It was such a fun system to play around with and actually made me strategize in a different way compared to my other museums. Instead of just grouping exhibits together to make my museum look aesthetic, I was now placing them where they would benefit my dirty capitalist schemes.

But Arty-Facts innovative gameplay doesn’t just stop there. You also have a range of other art forms you can display in your museum. One of my absolute favorites was the new Performance Stage. During your expeditions, one of the rewards can be different types of shows. The first one you unlock is a mime performance, but you will unlock more as you play. As soon as I saw the stage, I ran to make a whole theatre room inside my museum where visitors could enjoy dimmed lights and a beverage bar ready for the show. My only annoyance was that visitors wouldn’t sit down to watch these shows; they just congregate near the front of the stage. My dream of a cozy theatre was quickly snubbed as I realized they wouldn’t use the benches provided. It’s a simple grievance, but it would make all the difference in immersion if they did sit down.

Other gameplay features include being able to base portraits and statues on a Muse. This cleverly ties assistants into the DLC as they can be trained to learn the Modelling skill. Pair a model and an artist, and you’ll get some rather vague-looking pieces that, like the sculptures, can look a bit drab and ugly. I didn’t get far enough into the game to see if they would improve, but I wasn’t too impressed by their aesthetic. That might just be because I don’t have an eye for art, though.

From painting, sculpting, and modelling, the new art studio room you can build was such a great part of my museum that I turned it into an open gallery for visitors to peer in at, not that they were probably able to. You have different workstations for each category, like a modelling stage for your assistant to bust out some poses and an easel to paint on. It's small things like this that make the art museum feel so unique. This is also paired with the new range of skills you can teach your employees. As mentioned before, assistants are involved in the art-making process with modeling skills, but the art experts have a plethora to choose from, too. Each art form, including painting, sculpting, performing, and learning emotions, has its own trainable skill, which, paired with the different emotions, meant I was taking care in how I trained my staff. In previous DLCs, I kind of just let skills run wild, only training staff if I needed a specific skill now and then. But in Arty-Facts, I was always making sure I had a team of artists with a range of unique skills. It felt like an added layer to this system, which has existed since the base game.

The last notable gameplay feature I’ll talk about is the regular auctions, where you can sell art depending on trends. Every so often, you’ll be able to submit up to three pieces of art to an auction so that they can sell off for a much higher price than what you would have gotten from selling it normally. To make even more bank, each auction will have a desirable theme, like paintings that evoke joy. Exploit this by making higher quality pieces of art and you will find yourself raking in cash like never before. Normally, with Two Point’s gameplay, you just increase the number of exhibits to make more cash, but in Arty-Facts, you’ll be able to earn millions in no time at all. However, at times it kind of felt like cheating and felt a bit too easy to make loads of money after you unlocked the auctions.

The new map of Undee Docks was definitely one of the DLC's shortcomings. It is small, considering the sheer amount of artwork you can get your hands on in terms of commissioned pieces and famous pieces. I guess they are encouraging you to prioritize famous artwork to be displayed and just cycle commissioned pieces to be auctioned off.

On the other hand, the decorations for Arty-Facts are some of the best ranges we have gotten for a museum. I loved the sophisticated art décor of hanging spotlights, the rustic feel of the exposed pipework, and the cartoonish theme of the crayons and color blobs. I could plan out my museum with different themes rather than just one, which made it all feel more grandiose. I especially loved the décor for the cafeteria, which, for lack of a better description, looks like DoodleBob from SpongeBob. You can have an absolute blast here in creating your perfect art museum.