Cozy video games have a way of grabbing the attention of a large swath of the gaming community. And the indie simulation game Dressmaker, which became a viral hit upon its recent release, is a good example of that genre’s appeal.
This game is free of any stressful timers, microtransactions or pressing demands. You simply make dresses and hear about how your stitch-and-sew creations impact the lives of your customers.
Gamers open their new shop in Twillford, a small town in some small kingdom in some indistinct historical period. There’s a vintage feel about the shop, giving the sense of an era when customers might regularly visit a dressmaker for custom-made additions to their wardrobe. The game definitely takes cues from historical dress styles and patterns, but it lets you experiment with designs that feel modern, too.
However, your choices are primarily going to be determined by your customers’ desires. Dressmaker’s clients are a quirky and engaging lot. And each customer is seeking a new raiment for their own occasion-based needs: work, funerals, dinners, romantic wooings, disguises, secretive heists, etc.
Whether or not a client’s intentions are successful all comes down to your skill at choosing the right fabric, the right patterns and creating the right dress. That creation process starts with getting accurate measurements from the client—bust, waist and hips—and then pulling out a sketchbook to design the perfect frock.
The sketchbook pins the customer’s preferred style tags at the top of the page—elegant, cute, professional, gothic, etc.—and then offers up some of your currently owned dress patterns that might fit the bill. (More patterns become available whenever you create well and level up your reputation.) You can also place fabric samples next to the design or grab a colored pencil to see how the finished product might look.
Then, after choosing the style, it’s up to you to pick out the fabrics, buttons, bows, lace trims or other accessories that might look best. You then pin the patterns to the fabric, cut out the proper pieces, place it all on a mannequin and stitch everything together. Finally, add those well-chosen accessories and voilà, the garment is ready for pickup.
Dressmaker also gives you the freedom to design and create dresses outside of the purchase orders given to you by your steady stream of customers. If you simply want to create something fresh and exciting and sell it off the rack, you can make money, improve your reputation and unlock new items that your shop can then use for future dress orders.
Dressmaker is a single-player game for PC and Mac that you play offline. And it does not require an internet connection other than for the initial download.
Dressmaker is all about cozy, no-stress creation. It’s colorful and laidback and comes adorned with a bright, ballroom-like musical accompaniment.
Those who enjoy repetitive creativity with a bit of quirky storyline will likely feel right at home here.
However, while most of the clients you deal with are cute and appealing, it’s the quirky sorts that might bother some players.
Gamers don’t interact with any happenings outside their shop, but some clients can be a bit off-putting. One snooty woman plots to seduce a wealthy duke at a funeral, for instance. Another vampire-like client shows up only at night and commissions a dress that won’t show red stains. And a goth-looking woman appears to be hosting two ghost-like entities, requesting a dress for a séance she’s attending. (Again, we don’t see any of those outside activities, but we hear about them or read newspaper accounts of the outcomes.)
Players can also choose to sabotage their creation if they find a character to be rude or obnoxious. Those purposely poorly designed fashions not only damage the client—getting them fired from a position, ousted from society, etc.—but the choices damage the dressmaker’s reputation, too. The interlocking character stories (10 main storylines) also change with the addition of sabotage. However, the dressmaker gains small, stat-boosting items from those sabotages that actually improve aspects of their craft.
Dressmaker is a cozy game for those who enjoy no-pressure dressmaking and gossiping with clients. Though there are a few errant stitches to be aware of in the story mix.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
