 This week, we've been playing a lot of Two Point Hospital Jumbo Edition. It is, according to our daughter, her new favourite game ever. And I have to admit, I'm getting quite competitive, because somehow her hospitals are always nicer than mine. A spiritual successor to the Theme Hospital games of Days Gone By, Two Point Hospital is filled with bizarre and hilarious illnesses, such as Flat Pack Syndrome, which turns patients into cardboard, lack of humanity, which makes them look like aliens, and, our family's favourite, Moxstar, which makes patients look like Freddie Mercury impersonators. These silly illnesses are a lot of fun, but what's fascinating is how the developers at Two Point Studios created the game's wacky maladies based on actual trips to stay in hospital. Sort of. We'd like to thank Sega and Two Point Studios for sponsoring this video and reaching out to us with an opportunity to talk about the game. We've genuinely been enjoying it, so this has been an absolute treat for us. First, it's important to note that the developers at Two Point Studios have an impressive pedigree. The studio was founded by Ben Heimers, Mark Webley, and Gary Carr. Webley and Carr having previously worked on the iconic hospital management sim, Theme Hospital, before working at Lionhead Studios on the Fable series. When Microsoft closed down Lionhead in 2016, a lot of British developers who had been working on Fable suddenly found themselves in need of employment. And so, Two Point Studios was established, with many ex-Lionhead staff members joining the new start-up. For their first project, considering the studio staff's history, a management sim made perfect sense. Said art director Mark Smart, the number of people who kept saying, Why hasn't there been another Theme Hospital game? It's a title that's so fondly remembered. Everyone who speaks about Theme Hospital is like they're recounting an old pet or family friend. In 20 years, no one has really done a hospital game. Of course, hospital drama can be a heavy subject, and the team wanted the opportunity to flex their creative muscles and fill the game with a lot of wit and humour. As they discussed the kind of direction the game should go in, they began reminiscing on their own experiences visiting hospitals. According to an interview with Gamers Pack, the first part of the creative process was dedicated to the different experiences the team had with the British health system. This naturally led to a conversation about the fear of doctors and hospitals, and the attempt to overcome that fear with large amounts of British humour, including a lot of dad jokes. Lead animator Chris Knot has elaborated further, saying, Having been in hospital a few times, you sit there thinking, I wonder if it is a bit weirder when no one's watching. That's what I hope. I don't know if I'm the only person who thinks that. When I've been into hospitals, you see the doctors being incredibly serious and doing their job as they should do. But I often think that when they go through the doors and they shut, what's going on behind the door? I hope it's something utterly weird. And so the team started building a hospital with the weirdest, silliest ailments and maladies that they could think of. Sometimes this involves coming up with a cute visual gag that they reverse-engineered into a wacky disease, while other times, most of the time, the team came up with an absolutely terrible pun and just ran with it. The process was aided by the fact that, at Two Point Studios, everyone shares an open office space and is able to contribute to the development of gameplay ideas and horribly bad jokes. Laura and Carter, instead of her time as Two Points Community Manager, it's something that I really love about that studio that we're all in that room together and bouncing ideas off each other. When the game was first put together, though, the developers found that quirky illnesses weren't enough. Their hospitals needed to feel like miniature communities with characters, patients, doctors, and hospital visitors, all interacting together. According to lead designer Ben Huskins, the solution was to rely on the team's experience with fable games. I was quite focused on the town life and the villagers and how they'd interact with each other and interact with the hero and all that kind of stuff. So there were lots of interesting things that we played around with in fable, like villagers having personality traits and characters reacting to things that are happening around them. The result is a game which sparkles with wit, charm, and personality. We've had a fantastic time as a family, laughing at all the silly antics that our hospital patrons have got up to. We've also found that somehow our daughter is significantly better at the game than we are, which doesn't seem fair. We've been playing with increasing competitiveness, I'll admit, on my part at least. Whilst I built my initial hospital with the haphazardness of the casual player, it was when our five-year-old came home, rested the controller from my hands, and, in starting a new save, instantly built a better hospital that the stakes of my investment in my hospital empire rose. Right away, she got to grips with the rather obvious nuances of the controls that I'd missed. Who knew that those tannoy announcements about watering plants and refilling the automated vending machines manually meant, well, I needed to do it manually. The five-year-old did, and as such acquired a cardiology unit before me. Even her business acumen proved more sound as it took me no less than three loans to expand my hospital site to the same level. Game on, kiddo. Two Point Hospital Jumbo Edition is the game's biggest bundle to date, and is out now. It contains four massive expansions, two item packs, and a free update with room templates and remix levels. They say three million players can't be wrong. And given how much fun we've been having, we thoroughly agree. The moral of the story is that teamwork bolsters creativity. As the developers at Two Point Studios have bounced ideas off each other, they've been able to draw on their various experiences and talents to create a fun, silly, endlessly entertaining game.