Dressmaker

Rating: 4.5/5 - An almost perfect game

Difficulty: 2/5 - Minimal skill needed

Replayability: 3/5 - Linear story followed by creative freedom

Commitment: 3/5 - Longer than expected main story

Play Time: 34.6hrs | Achievements: 28/32 | Story: Completed | Platform: Steam

Available on: Steam (Win, Mac)

Website: https://dressmaker.info/

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A game that I have dreamt about for years, Dressmaker does not disappoint. This game was brought to my attention through the new Steam Calendar feature and immediately piqued my interest. I have been wishing for a dress up game that gave me the excitement that I used to experience as a kid playing on sites like “Girls Games”, yet with features that could keep me interested now that I am an adult. This game does this perfectly.

The main feature of this game, the dress making, has a perfect balance between having enough options to have a large amount of creative freedom, without being so overwhelmed by what to do. You are guided through customer requirements that help you make decisions, but I am yet to see two identical dresses made for the same request. Each player really does get to choose how they complete each order, whether that be beautifully thought out designs with hours sunk into each dress, simple dresses that allow you to progress through the story quicker, or even complete abominations that are incredibly hilarious and fun to see. Whatever route you decide to take, your customer will be happy as long as you meet their requirements. As you get to know your customers, you become inspired with new pattern ideas, with these ideas you are able to mix and match the bodice, skirt, sleeves and collar to create many different combinations of dresses for your future customers, and even your “off the rack” dresses: a system that allows you to sell/gift dresses that you wish to make outside of the story-line. The amount of fabrics in Dressmaker is enough to make a real life seamstress giddy, with a good range of simple, extravagant and delightful fabrics to choose from, the limit for what you can make is almost non-existent. Once you have chosen your fabrics, the next game is to try and jigsaw all of the pattern pieces together in a way that wastes as little fabric as possible whilst also maintaining the structural quality of the fabric. Finally, you drape each piece onto a mannequin before sewing it all together. Each mini-game is enjoyable in it’s own right, and if you do struggle, there are optional tools that you can switch on to assist you.

To help you on your way towards a booming dress shop, the game incorporates a truly enjoyable story that you get to watch through your conversations with your customers and the weekly paper, which often highlights the effects of the wears you’ve created. This storyline is what made the game incredibly difficult to put down, it was well written, and I was always left wanting more. For the price of the game, I kept on being surprised when even more dress requests came through, I truly could not understand how this much quality storytelling could fit withing the budget of this game. I am grateful that such an affordable game has shown that it can also have a lengthy amount of quality gameplay about it. The character arcs were perfectly done, and the final dress really did feel like a satisfying and rewarding ending.

So why, when I loved this game so much, did it not get 5 stars? First off, this game is deserving of the full 5, there were just a few quality of life features that would’ve been nice for me personally, and the lack of them was noticeable enough for me to not feel comfortable giving a maximum rating. The first issue for me was that you couldn’t see the back of the dress pattern until you’d already cut the fabrics and started placing them on the mannequin, it would’ve been nice if you could see what the back looked like whilst in the sketchbook phase. Another issue for me with the sketchbook involved the colouring in system, I would have preferred a way to change the colour of the pencil whilst it was in my hand, and colouring in became particularly difficult depending on where you clicked the pencil to pick it up. If you clicked on the base of the pencil, that is where you held it, this unfortunately made it feel clunky, and the fact that you could also click buttons through the pencil meant that I erased and even confirmed the design a handful of times whilst still attempting to colour it. Then comes sizing the mannequin, a feature that I loved in the beginning, but soon grew tiresome. When making my own dress, I can “load measurements” from previously measured clients, I think this would be a nice option in the settings to have available during the main story, and I’d love to be able to add my own measurements to these options. When buying fabrics, you are able to filter them in multiple ways, including colour, however filtering by colour is not possible with the accessories, which can make searching through the possibilities a little frustrating. Seam ripping during the construction phase caused pieces to float mid air in the way of where you are trying to look. This piece can only fit in the very specific place I just ripped it from, I would rather it automatically transfer back into my inventory so that I can continue to seam rip wherever I like. There is also an issue during seam ripping where, whilst trying to remove a piece, you can still press the button to start sewing pieces together, whereas I don’t think it should be possible to click this button whilst you are seam ripping. Other than quality of life features, there was one other feature that I felt was missing, and that is to state my own requirements, just like how customers do. Sometimes I want to challenge myself, I want to try to make risqué workwear or a cute formal dress, I would like to be able to set my own parameters that can guide me identical to how the requirements of my customers can guide me.

These requests are incredibly nitpicky, and that is truly a testement to how incredible this game is. Since completing this game I have continued to return to it, creating dresses for my friends, my OCs, and even using the gifting system for my favourite in game characters (I ended up loving Prudence, to my own surprise). This game is also a creation made with so much care and love, which feels very lacking in the current gaming sphere as a whole, and it is made even clearer how much love was put into this game when you learn it was made to give the developers partner the ability to make dresses again after illness stopped that from being possible otherwise. You can be creative, you can just enjoy the story, you can even be downright ridiculous. An immaculate game that I am thrilled is getting the reception it deserves.