Museum Curator

Museum Curator is a relaxed tycoon game about running a town museum, seen from above as a warm, hand-drawn floor plan. Every week brings an auction where rival museums bid back, and dig sites you can fund for a few days: the Badlands for dinosaur bones, a desert tomb, a shipwreck, a crater field, castle ruins and an old attic. Exhibits come in six themes, dinosaurs, space, Egypt, knights, art, and steam and sea, each with its own wow and size, from a smiling sarcophagus and a knight's armour to a steam engine, a model ship and a whole T. rex.

Drag exhibits onto the floor, add plaques, spotlights, benches and ropes, and group them: a hall of one theme earns a bonus, a complete matching set earns more, and a conservator keeps old exhibits from going dusty. Visitors arrive with their interests shown as little icons, head for what they love, get tired, eat cake in the café and pick up a souvenir on the way out. School groups book on set days and need a guide. Between weeks you build new wings, a lift to the upper floor, a planetarium dome, a tall Dinosaur Hall and a garden, set the ticket price and check every coin in the weekly ledger.

Time runs in steady ticks at 1×, 2× or 4×, and you can skip to next week whenever you like; there are no waits and nothing to buy. If you ever cannot pay the staff, a kind patron makes a donation, so you are never stuck. Twenty milestones lead from your first exhibit to a complete dinosaur and museum of the year, and Sandbox opens every hall with every exhibit in the storeroom for endless, relaxed building. It is a gentle brain workout in layout and budgeting, and your museum is saved in your browser after every change.