It’s not quite the Hollywood of the south east, but Farnham’s place on the big and small screen is well documented.
Film crews have brought gladiators and dragons to Bourne Wood, while the UCA is a hotbed of young filmmaking talent and creativity.
But did you also know Farnham’s gaming industry is also going places? And worldwide, the industry has got the potential to be a far greater money spinner as the revenue generated from gaming is soon expected to match TV.
Gaming in Farnham is going from strength to strength with the UCA keen to develop its education and innovation in the industry.
Nearby Guildford is considered the UK’s gaming hub but with a high concentration of talent in a small place, some have made the journey along the Hogs Back for new opportunities.
Leading in Farnham is Two Point Studios. Founded in 2016 by Ben Hymers, Gary Carr and Mark Webley, the firm is well-known across the world for its management-style games.
The trio have decades of gaming experience while Gary and Mark had a big hand in one of the biggest hits of the 1990s as they worked with Bullfrog Productions on Theme Park.
The firm followed it up with Theme Hospital with the pair touring the likes of Frimley Park and the Royal Surrey County for research to give the much-loved game an authentic feel.
Fast forward 20 years and the experience played a big part in the firm’s first studio success, Two Point Hospital, which sold more than one million copies and was followed-up by Two Point Campus.
The studio have clearly struck a winning formula and the next instalment in the franchise will give gamers the chance to run and manage a museum. The title? Yep, you’ve guessed it: Two Point Museum.
Farnham’s relationship with Two Point Studios is deep as Lead Designer Luke Finlay-Maxwell is a UCA graduate who achieved a first-class degree in Computer Game Arts.
After finishing at UCA he went on to create his own company and attempted to create his own game in Early Access called Museum Tycoon.
Luke is now the firm’s lead game designer at Two Point while their latest offering Two Point Museum will soon be released for consoles and PC.
For those who have played the previous iterations the new theme has a completely different look and concept to the previous games, but retains the Two Point style and humour.
Two Point Studio’s previous classics quirks have been “light-headness” where patients heads would turn into a light bulb and “pandemic” where you would have to cure patients with a pan stuck on their head.
The new game has added new ways of customising and managing your museum but it would not be a Two Point game without things getting a bit hectic.
New customisation tools mean no two play-throughs or museums are the same. Mechanics such as “buzz” and “knowledge” also have to be managed if you want to avoid complete chaos.
Whilst you have task to progress through the maps and different stages, each museum takes a life of its own and Two Point Studios will bring you back to some of your most loved creations throughout your progression.
This is different from the old style where players would either leave their hospital/campus to progress or stay stuck in love with what they have built and have spent time on at the expense of progressing to the next stages.
Each character type in the game has a set of interests and tendencies that can affect donations, gift shop purchases and the types of artefacts they want to see. This allows players to focus individually on characters and a new addition to the game is pesky children who climb on your artefacts and damage them.
In previous games players could get around the mechanics by exploiting the interest mechanics by placing on mass various items rather than taking a considered approach of where items are placed.
The major change comes with the addition of expeditions giving you a vast map to explore and collect Artefacts to bring back to your museum. This adds a new element to the game balancing the risk of finding new treasures and potentially injuring or returning without the staff you sent.
The expedition mechanic leaves a lot of room for interesting themes the team can build upon after the release of the game.
Two Point is firmly entrenched in Farnham as their current Gostrey House office is the fourth they’ve had in town while the studio employs around 40 staff, managing everything from game design to artist.
The company has taken what it has learnt from its previous experiences creating hospital wards and university campuses.
The studio were kind enough to allow me to be one of only 30 to play a version ahead of release.
In the short time I played the game I was able to collect artefacts, head on expeditions, manage staff and deal with some very unhappy customers.
My staff threatened to leave due to what they deemed unfair wages, I spent thousands on hiring cleaners to keep up with the customers littering, albeit to no success. This was probably due to the lack of bins I had place within the museum.
The most unhappy customer seemed to be the amply named “Nicholas Lost” who I had accidentally trapped in the shop behind the checkout desks.
I had found in comparison to the prior instalments the new buzz mechanic made me think more about the placement of artefacts and the decoration surrounding to optimise the museum experience for my guests despite their behaviour.
This led me to micro-managing the spaces in the museum and looking more in detail at where I was placing things. I started to begin to think where my visitors would want the exhibit to be and I started to try out the new features such as the partion walls.
I used this to create pathways to organise foot traffic of the likes you would see at the check-out desk or security at Heathrow Airport.
Shortly after I got to play an early version of the game, Two Point Studios jetted off to Cologne for Gamescom, the largest gaming convention in the world.
The team hosted a “deep dive” at the event and it may have been the deepest of the convention as it was announced to the surprise of many gamers that aquarium exhibits will also feature.
The convention was also the first time gamers and streamers could get their hands on a demo of the game as well as take cool photos looking as if they are a frozen exhibit similar to the cavemen in the game.
The Two Point Museum grand opening is March 4 next year and preorders are available now. The pre-order bonus also features Sony legend and the world’s fastest hedgehog Sonic themed items and is available on PC, XBOX and PS5.
