Dressmaker, explained.

What is Dressmaker?

Dressmaker is a single-player crafting sim about running a small dress shop in a town full of customers. Instead of picking outfits from a menu, you make every dress by hand: choosing fabric, sketching the design, arranging pattern pieces, cutting, sewing on a working in-game sewing machine, then finishing with buttons, bows, lace and appliqué.

It was created by Cozy Lives, a label of the South African studio Free Lives (Broforce, Terra Nil, GORN). The game grew out of a three-week prototype built by Jonathan Hau-Yoon and Sabrina Becker, inspired by real-world dressmaking — grain direction, bias cuts and fabric drape all genuinely matter to the finished dress.

Quick facts

How it plays

A commission arrives with a customer's measurements, tastes and an event on their social calendar. You sketch a design, buy fabric, lay out the pattern (along the grain or on the bias — it changes the drape), cut the panels, sew them together, decorate, and deliver. Or you ignore the brief entirely, hang your own designs in the shop window and sell them off the rack. You can also, famously, pet the shop cat.

The developers estimate roughly 35 hours of story commissions, plus freeform designing on top. There are no time limits and no microtransactions.

Reception

Dressmaker became a word-of-mouth hit within days of launch: an Overwhelmingly Positive Steam rating (around 96% of thousands of reviews), a peak of more than 27,000 concurrent players in the first week, and over 400,000 wishlists before release. Reviewers keep comparing it to the cult classic Barbie Fashion Show, and the Steam top reviews include plenty of self-declared unlikely fans.

Looking for something else?

“Dressmaker” returns results for a lot of different things. If that's you:

• The 2015 Kate Winslet film — see our Dressmaker movie guide.
• Sewing machines branded “Dressmaker” — see the sewing machine page.
• Every page on this wiki — start at the wiki hub.

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