History VideoGame / TwoPointHospital

* AndNowForSomethingCompletelyDifferent: [[spoiler: The town of Duckworth-Upon-Bilge challenges you not to build a private hospital from scratch, but to expand and maintain a public hospital. This means you don't get money from diagnosis and treatments, or even vending machines, and instead have to fund your hospital by completing challenges.]]

* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: The basis of treatment at your hospital. Most treatments are described as "painful" and look very much so. There's a machine that unscrews heads, another that torments patients with depressing images and a shower of cold water, and another that flails the patients around like a ragdoll to remove a stuck saucepan. And yeah, you're charging a ridiculous amount of money for this treatment. It's a veritable cruelty-potential manifestor for intelligent players.
* VideoGameCrueltyPunishment: However, if you force a patient to take a cure before they have completed diagnosis, you risk killing the patient instead, which will take a notch off your reputation.
* VideoGameTime: The in-game clock passes pretty quickly, with each day lasting about 4 seconds on normal speed, yet the staff and patients move around at a normal walking pace. This means that patients often spend over a hundred "days" in the hospital, from checking in to checking out (either literally or [[DeadlyEuphemism figuratively]]). However, rooms are constructed instantaneously, and putting up a new building takes a couple of in-game weeks (under a minute of real-world time).

** Sir Nigel Bickleworth's personality is also a callback to a particular [[AmbiguouslyGay William McDuff]] from VideoGame/TheMovies, right down to his thespian background. Unsurprisingly, said game was by Lionhead Studios.

* AscendedFanboy: A number of the staff that worked on Two Point Hospital were big fans of ''Theme Hospital'' back in the day[[http://fandom.wikia.com/articles/how-two-point-studios-made-two-point-hospital]]. Now they got to work on a spiritual successor with the creators of the original game.

** Sir Nigel Bickleworth's personality is also a callback to a particular [[AmbiguouslyGay William McDuff]] from VideoGame/TheMovies, right down to his thespian background. Unsurprisingly, said game was by Lionhead Studios, which was founded by the same ex-Bullfrog staff.

* AscendedFanboy: A number of the staff that worked on Two Point Hospital were big fans of ''Theme Hospital'' back in the day. Now they get to work on a spiritual successor with the creators of the original game.

* AscendedFanboy: A number of the staff that worked on Two Point Hospital were big fans of ''Theme Hospital'' back in the day. Now they get to work on a spiritual successor for the creators of the original game.

** Sir Nigel Bickleworth's personality is also a callback to a particular William [=McDuff=] from VideoGame/TheMovies. Unsurprisingly, said game was by Lionhead Studios, which was founded by the same ex-Bullfrog staff.

** Sir Nigel Bickleworth's personality is also a callback to a particular William McDuff from VideoGame/TheMovies. Unsurprisingly, said game was by Lionhead Studios, which was founded by the same ex-Bullfrog staff.

** The title of the game itself is a shout-out to ''Series/TwinPeaks''.

''Two Point Hospital'' is a 2018 video game and spiritual successor to the 1997 game ''VideoGame/ThemeHospital'', sharing a similar cartoonish aesthetic and tongue-in-cheek sense of humour. Developed by Two Point Studios by former staff members from [[Creator/BullfrogProductions Bullfrog]], [[Creator/LionheadStudios Lionhead]] and Mucky Foot, ''Two Point Hospital'' is a SpaceManagementGame that puts you in the role of a hospital manager and challenges you to build and maintain a network of hospitals, treating patients with a range of bizarre ailments, from "mock star" (an irresistible compulsion to dress and perform like Music/FreddieMercury) to "light-headedness" (having a giant light-bulb for a head).

The underlying gameplay, as in its spiritual predecessor and similar titles, is space-management. Each mission map is limited in space and usually can't comfortably fit everything, so you need to make sure to skimp on space as much as possible while keeping rooms roomy enough - otherwise everyone (including your employees) will get moody and leave. Narrow corridors and rooms without windows are likely to end up bankrupting you. On some levels you can also spend money to purchase extra adjacent buildings to expand your hospital. Of course, distance between the various facilities is very important: staff need to reach the toilets and staff rooms quickly so they can get back to their jobs more often, and patients don't want to spend forever walking the hallways between the various diagnosis and treatment rooms. Not to mention the fact that emergency situations occur often, in which you'll need to provide treatment to a lot of patients within a very short period of time, including the time it takes for them to disembark from a medical helicopter or ambulance and WALK to the treatment room, and wait in line for the nurse!

** Swindles Bank (one of three banks that provide loans to cash-strapped hospitals) has a two-headed griffon in a ring of circular dots as its logo, a clear parody of the now-defunct [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midland_Bank Midland Bank]].

** The illnesses "Mock Star" and "Night Fever" have patients dressing and behaving like Music/FreddieMercury in his iconic 80s-era yellow jacket, and Creator/JohnTravolta in ''Film/SaturdayNightFever'' respectively.
** Patients coming in with a saucepan stuck on their head have it removed in the "[[Film/PansLabyrinth Pans Lab]]".
** One of the illnesses is named "[[Literature/HarryPotter Bogwarts]]". The FlavorText suggests that as well as being cured by a visit to the pharmacy, it could also be cured "by witchcraft".
** The illness "Mucky Feet" is named in tribute to Mucky Foot, the studio that was set up by former Bullfrog employees and which developed ''VideoGame/{{Startopia}}'', another SpaceManagementGame.

* ToiletHumor: When the, ahem, call of nature gets too urgent for a character, they will usually dash towards the nearest bathroom with their hands clutching their... pertinent areas.

* VideoGameCrueltyPunishment: However, if you force a patient to take a cure before s/he has completed diagnosis, you risk killing the patient instead, which will take a notch off your reputation.

** The illness "Mucky Feet" is named in tribute to Mucky Foot, the studio that was set up by former Bullfrog employees and which developed VideoGame/{{Startopia}}, another SpaceManagementGame.