After spending a lot of time with Two Point Museum when it first launched on Switch late last year, I was offered the chance to check out the Zooseum expansion. Which is a little weird, because the game is about running a museum, and of course, in typical Two Point style, nothing is as it is in reality, but still, a zoo in a museum is a little odd. Perhaps they’re just buttering us up for a real Two Point Zoo at a later stage.

If you haven’t checked out our review of Two Point Museum, be sure to do that as well, because most of the pros and cons of the base game are present here in the Zooseum expansion, although they do try some different things in this DLC.

After taking a little time to figure out exactly how the Zooseum expansion works and how it fits into the main game: the main map now has one new museum location, Silverbottom Park. Along with animals, which we’ll get to shortly, the game now has a whole bunch of new staff roles, exhibit tools, habitats or enclosures, and they all have different biomes for different sorts of creatures. There’s also a welfare station for fixing up and pampering animals as well. However, the downside with all these exhibits and new rooms to build is that you’ll run out of space quickly. My museum is huge, but it’s still feeling cramped.

On the expedition map there’s a whole new island with new locations to send staff to, and they can bring back all sorts of exotic, um, animals. They’re not actual real animals, but instead silly versions of real animals in typical Two Point style. They all need somewhere to live, and the habitats are where they go. Each animal needs a different style of habitat and different decorations.

You also don’t need to fetch animals on expeditions and get them randomly. You can apply to house animals through the game’s conservation system. You earn points by releasing animals into the wild. This means you can not only get the animals you want to fill out your museum, but it’s also not just a case of “here are some animals we found and stuck in a cage”. You can look after them, then set them free.

The game is a little vague on some things, though. You’ll soon find out that some animals love to eat others, so keeping them separate, and getting the resources to create spaces for all these critters, will take a little while. This is also where the conservation system comes in handy: you can keep something for a while, then when something else comes along, not feel too bad about letting it go. Although you’ll want to keep some animals around for a while, especially when they bond with an expert.

Outside of these systems, the rest of the museum runs pretty much as before. Keep queues under control, price things well, give people lots to look at, and keep staff happy. The Zooseum additions are integrated into the available space pretty well.

The Zooseum DLC is a great addition to the Two Point universe. The animal conservation aspect is really well thought out from both a gameplay and animal welfare perspective. It’s a fun little add-on, which hopefully doesn’t mean there’s never going to be a Two Point Zoo game.

Rating: 4/5