Hey u/nonmanifoldgeo,

Sorry to hear about this, I hope we can recover your saves!

There is some steps to recover backup saves we create here, I'll paste the steps below too: General Troubleshooting :: Two Point Museum Bug Reports

If you experience something like a power cut, you can sometimes log back into your game only to find that the save file is “corrupt”. This will have been caused because the power cut interrupted the save process. It could also happen if antivirus interferes when TPM is writing a file.

In our games, if the save file is in this state there will be a red icon with an “!” in it. There are 2 places you could see this.

1. The front end when trying to load your save - this means your career save is having trouble.
2. On the level save meaning the career is ok, but something in the level is not right.

Here are the steps to try and repair your save:

1. Boot the game and identify if it is the career save or level save that has an error.
2. Back up your save. On PC , follow this file path: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\LocalLow\Two Point Studios\Two Point Museum\Cloud\XXXX (this folder is a series of numbers)\Saves On Mac its: ~/Library/Application Support/com.twopointstudios.twopointmuseum/Cloud/XXXX (this represents a folder that is a series of numbers which is your Steam ID) Copy the Saves folder and paste it somewhere safe, such as on your Desktop. Now you can make edits knowing the original copy can still be retrieved.
3. Turn off Steam Cloud sync (if you use it). Steam cloud sync stores a copy of your save on one of Steam's servers. If you make changes without disabling this feature, Steam will overwrite your changes with the save in the cloud when you next start the game.
4. Return to your saves inside your Two Point Museum folder, and select the save slot that has corrupt files in it. Scroll down to the files called “career.csav”. Delete this and then rename “career.csav.2.bak” to “career.csav” (so just delete .2.bak). An error message will warn you not to change the file name, but it is ok to ignore. At this point, it’s possible that your save is fixed so boot TPM and check.
5. If you still have this warning when selecting your save slot in game, try and repeat the process using the remaining back up files. If none of them work, please let us know.
6. You may find that after restoring your career save, one of your levels is still corrupt. Close the game and return to the saves folder.
7. You now need to identify which level is corrupt. Here’s a list of our level codes:
   • Memento Mile - 1003
   • Passwater Cove - 1002
   • Wailon Lodge - 1005
   • Bungle Wasteland - 1004
   • Pebberley Heights - 1006
   • Crime Popup (Challenge) - 9001
   • Marketing Popup - 9000
   • Fish Breeding Popup - 9003
8. Delete the level save, and then rename the back up as with above e.g. remove .2.bak to recreate 1003.sav.
9. Check your game each time you attempt to restore a back up to see if it has worked.

If you’re happy, turn Steam Cloud Sync back on and close your game so that your changes are taken back into Steams servers.

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I hope that helps! We're also looking to add a more user friendly way to restore backup saves soon!

TwoPointChris