My name may not be Elim Garak, but for the town of Twillford, I am but a simple modiste. As I once said in an article stating I am more interested in Free Lives and Cozy Lives’ Dressmaker than GTA VI, I can say wholeheartedly that is still true to this moment. Originally made by Terra Nil and Fortnite developer Jonathan Hau-Yoon and his partner Sabrina Becker, the idea came about due to Sabrina’s hopes of being a professional costume designer being dashed by Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. Eventually, the small project grew and Hau-Yoon’s employer, Free Lives, saw the potential like all of us who saw the original social media posts.

What feels like years later since first seeing Dressmaker’s original posts online, the delightful, wholesome, and colorful dress-making game is out now. You play as the titular dressmaker. Simply known to the folks in the town of Twillford as that, you grow your business, learning the life and many lives of the town, and do so all while making pretty dresses for very wholesomely designed women who either inhabit or pass through the town. In essence, Dressmaker is a creative job simulator in a colorful and very wholesome world – a departure from Free Lives’ previous games Broforce, Genital Jousting, and Gorn.

Starting off with a rather loose story, you grow your business off the back of the town’s Duke dying and all the ladies of the town needing various dresses. Some women work for a diplomat, some are family, and some are looking to grab the attention of the new, younger Duke of Twillford. Each with their own requirements and desires in how they want their new, custom-designed dresses to look. Some want colorful, some want professional, some want simple, and some just want something that’s warm and can be worn at work later at night.

However, it isn’t as disjointed as that sounds. Throughout Dressmaker, you’ll learn the people’s stories from their own words, expressing anger, excitement, anxiety, and such with the idea that the pretty dress you’ll make for their occasions will help them. It is a bit of a cliché for me to say it so plainly, but what you wear influences how you feel about yourself. Yet parts of Dressmaker are broken up into what I’ll call chapters. Seasonal or story-based events (such as a funeral or sports day) and the dresses you’ve made will be written up in the locally sponsored gossip rag, Spilt Tea.

The premise and story of Dressmaker are on the surface simple, though like most creative job simulators, you have a system underneath with a host of details to explore. Each customer asking for their dress in a specific style allows you to work within restrictions beyond your budget, but you can create “off-the-rack” designs between jobs. If you just want to design simple pieces, sew them together, and make some money, that’s fine. However, you have a selection from a textile warehouse on call and a growing selection of accessories to add.

You see, as you grow the business and grow your reputation, you gain different designs and different textiles and accessories. Completing commissions gets you three or more new design pieces, while growing through a 1-5, unknown, novice, apprentice, and such ranking gets you new fabrics and jewels to add. This is where you can be a bit more nitty-gritty with exactly how you want a dress to look. Keep in mind, though, these things cost money.

Silk and velvet cost more than cotton or linen, while jewels cost more than buttons. Yes, shockingly, the expensive material is expensive to buy and use. However, it also helps if you know how to use it well. Within Dressmaker, there isn’t really a system of rating which fabrics you use on certain parts of the dresses; there is an effect on the cut of the fabric, though. Not only that, but it also means trying to use as little space as possible on the fabrics that you have.

Say you buy five meters of velvet, you’ll want to get as much out of that velvet simply because it costs 400. 400 what? I don’t know; the in-game currency is a gold coin then numbers (let’s call them dollars). If you’re cutting whole skirt segments out of expensive fabrics, then you want to place them just right so you can get as much out of the textile as possible. This is the tricky bit of the otherwise wholesome and cozy creative job sim. Dressmaker, more or less, feels like it has the pressures of dressmaking when it needs it.

To pull the silk curtain back a little, I was about to go 200 words in on the whole names for the bits of the dress while simple tailors like myself might not know what a bodice or peplum was prior to Dressmaker. I may adore Ugly Betty, fell in love with Ashley Jensen, and cherish Jensen’s Christina McKinney, but actually knowing fashion and the cuts of fabric isn’t something I knew before. Something I think a lot of people playing Dressmaker wouldn’t know either.

Upon the initial release of Dressmaker, you were just given the names of the cuts and told to figure it out. Thankfully – kind of, after writing 200 words on it last week – one of my very few issues with Dressmaker has been addressed. That right there is itself a problem for me, because typically I like to have a moan about something, at least give one issue I might otherwise have with an otherwise near-perfect game. Now I am left with but one issue, if you can even call it that. I just want more.

I don’t actually mean that as a negative, but rather that beyond dresses for the lovely ladies of the town, part of me wants more. More clothing types, more to do with the dresses, more from the town, more… Basically all the stuff you’d do with a sequel. You know, hint, hint and all. As odd that my complaints are that I want a sequel already, that’s sort of it in terms of things to complain about seriously. The concept is so simple that complaining too much about it wouldn’t really fix anything.

Admittedly, I did run into a bug or two a day or so after launch. Most notably, I’d cut pieces out of fabric, head to pin them on to the dress ahead of sewing, but I couldn’t finish the dress. This is when I found out about peplums, oddly enough, but there was a piece of the dress missing. The quick and easy fix I found in that moment is to save and exit, reload, and bosh, your bit of the dress is right there. In the days following, I’ve not really seen this again; maybe it is still there, maybe it isn’t.

As I say, an update already addressed a function issue with Dressmaker; bugs are also being addressed where possible. I’m not saying I am willing to overlook these things, but I do know it is a small team and the problems therein, so I am willing to acknowledge that before decrying “unplayable.” Dressmaker isn’t unplayable, obviously; I’ve played for more than 20 hours now. But it doesn’t go without its flaws or oddities.

The soundtrack is rather repetitive (understandable) and was soon muted in favor of a playlist not beating that “pink pilates princess” thing Spotify called me last year. A minor complaint at best, wouldn’t you agree? I guess the only real “negative” I have left is the Off Rack Dress segment that allows you to design freely within the story mode – there is no creative mode – which isn’t as profitable to feel, I guess, worth it. Without trying to speak too much on the details of certain characters, some commissions are as little as $300 and others can be as high as more than $1000.

Again, you are working within a budget to make pretty dresses. If you were shrewd, you’d meet the requirements of the commission and pocket the profit, which is kind of the idea. It doesn’t feel like Off Rack Dresses make enough profit in comparison to make that an “Oh, I need quick money.” I guess part of me is wanting the ability to mark up the dress by a percentage or two by myself on top of the basic amount you’ll make from the sale after the costs are covered.

I made a burlap dress as a test: which, for materials, is free but $11 on labour. With “144%” markup for quality and “118%” markup for prestige, the total sale price of the dress was $19. I also did research. Avoiding Jeffrey’s house of late deliveries, a basic white crewneck T-shirt in a women’s medium can be $75+. I get that fast fashion skews prices online down to $20 if you look hard enough, but $19 for a whole dress handmade by an adult in their own boutique?

The complaints that I have are so minuscule to the actual point of Dressmaker that it feels weird raising them. I’m not saying there aren’t points to be raised, but actual negative reviews grumble, “why are there Black women in the Victorian era?” Well, it isn’t the Victorian era, and two, what? Give it a rest, you creepy little weirdos who can’t come up with even a genuine criticism about gameplay, quality, or performance.

For what it is, a small but deep creative job simulator, Dressmaker gets the majority of its mechanics and ideas done in an enjoyable way. As deep or shallow as you really want to make it, you can spend hours creating the most perfect million diamond bejeweled princess dress, or you can snip up a couple of bits of fabric, sew them together, and sell the dress as is.

Ultimately, Dressmaker reminds me of a lost generation of creative-based games that I loved on the Nintendo DS, yet more refined, more fun, and more focused. Unless there are deep-dark sections of Steam I’m not seeing, there is nothing quite like Dressmaker, and from its first impression ages ago to many hours of dressmaking later, I love it. Selfishly, I want more, particularly given Sabrina’s “passion for costume and fashion history” as noted in a press release previously. I want to argue recency bias, but I’ve a feeling Dressmaker will be in my top 3 games by the end of the year.

A PC review copy of Dressmaker was provided by Free Lives for this review.

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Dressmaker

$14.99

10

Score

10.0/10

Pros

• Nothing quite like it now.
• Decent accessibility for the simple gameplay.
• Delightfully fully creative and wonderfully drip-fed with more tools.

Cons

• The more free-style creative aspect doesn't feel as rewarding.
• Minor bugs.