If you’ve been looking for a reason to jump back into Two Point Hospital, now may be the perfect time to do so. Available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, a free update has brought a Sandbox Mode to Two Point Hospital, which - depending on your style of play - can be either good or bad (for your patients).
Players can now spend from an endless supply of cash and Kudosh - Two Point Hospital’s in-game currency - to build their dream hospital and play the game exactly as they see fit. All in-game items come unlocked in Sandbox Mode, with players having the ability to adjust the game's various options, such as turning off hospital epidemics (since that might hit a little too close to home right now). Of course, for those in need of an even greater challenge, options can be manipulated to hinder players, making it even more difficult to run an efficient, or even a semi-functioning hospital.
As someone who enjoyed the base game for what it was on Nintendo Switch, I decided to give the hospital building management sim another go, after shelving it a few weeks after it came out.
I decided to first try out playing Sandbox Mode with basically unlimited resources while limiting the chances for disasters or other major hardships to befall my hospital. While it was initially fun to be able to turn off my brain and build a hospital that I would have genuinely preferred to reside in rather than my own home, the novelty wore off pretty quickly. It was then I decided to try and do something that I almost never do in a video game: I made it harder on myself.
For my first attempt, I decided to reduce my money by half, while making sure to turn on everything that could possibly go bad. And, boy, did it go bad.
The overflow of patients in the Sandbox Mode announcement trailer seemed to pale in comparison to the amount of patients that entered my humble hospital. This made it increasingly difficult to keep up and retain any sort of reputable hospital rating, since I failed curing pretty much all of the patients that came through - including the VIP patients. Of course, not promoting my doctors and maintaining a high-level of morale throughout my establishment probably didn’t do me any favors, either. No natural disasters struck (which I was a bit disappointed by), but this attempt at trying to keep up meant the majority of my maintenance went by the wayside, which led to a couple of fires breaking out at once. It was at that point that I decided to give the poor patrons and employees of my hospital a break and turn off the Switch, as I was a complete and utter failure to them.
Although this first attempt went south very quickly, it was also an incredibly satisfying experience. Management sims are stressful enough for me as it is, but dialing up the difficulty in Two Point Hospital’s Sandbox Mode took that stress to an entirely different level. But, that’s not a bad thing. As anxiety-inducing and chaotic as it was, making Two Point Hospital harder was a fun time. I couldn’t help but think it would have also been hilarious to watch someone go through the trials and tribulations on a livestream. As such, I will be giving it another to try and manage a likely-to-fail hospital. And it probably will fail, but at least it will be fun along the way (for me; not so much my patients).