A friend of mine shared a picture of a dress he created in this game called ‘Dressmaker’ and asked me if it looked ok. “It is a commission for a farmer,” he said. “She loves getting her hands muddy and wanted something fun and cute.” It wasn’t bad at all; I was quite surprised by his knack for styling. But I knew I could do better. That was all the incentive I needed to download the game on Steam. It’s ₹719, and might very easily be the most time you spend on a game this year. If you aren’t yet convinced, read on.
My personal thesis on why this game has been such a huge success this year is just this: people yearn to create. To play god in some way, and be involved in every bit of the process of creating. They want to read people: what they like and dislike. They are inherently motivated to make them look very pretty. They love learning about different fabrics, and patterns, and what colours go with each other. They like the labour, the repetitive process of organising patterns on a plain canvas, and dextrously sewing them in place. All of this is almost an act of rebellion against external forces that are taking this free will from us.
The meta-analysis of this commentary aside, the truth is this: no other dress-up game in my memory has allowed us to be so fully involved in the process of making a dress. Do you remember those games, from back in the web-based videogames era? They largely involved picking out a bunch of clothes off a rack and throwing them together to style an outfit. ‘Dressmaker’ most definitely doesn’t stop at matching pants with the right shirt. To be clear, there are ten steps in the process! TEN. And this isn’t counting the smaller decisions like choosing the type of fabric, matching colours together, and things that don’t just involve clicking buttons.
When Alice, the weird girl haunted by spirits, asked me for something that was “Gothic” and “Romantic”, I kind of knew that I’d have to create something ethereal. Something with a slight glow that would make her shine even in the darkest night. Something that went with her pale skin and almost white hair. I went with a maroon lace fabric with accents of shiny wine-red velvet on a sweetheart bodice, and violet silk slit sleeves. The process starts with drafting out the right pattern that matches her criteria, and then pairing it with the colours and fabric that you think best make sense (with extra points if it fits her criteria better). There’s also this entire optimisation game where you need to cut pieces of fabric, so you have the least amount of wastage possible (this was my favourite part of the game). It’s definitely something I completely forget is a big part of tailoring, and might just be the reason for me to start learning the skill in real life.
Unlike Alice, some customers are incredibly picky. They don’t want something that’s too risqué, and they’re not sure about the playful clothes, and they definitely want at least three colours on their dress and so on. Weirdly enough, they’re my favourite sort to make clothes for. They make me think a bit deeper about the creation and try combinations that I might not have experimented with before.
There’s absolutely no baseline skill level required to play this game. An absolute novice to videogames would kill it on ‘Dressmaker’ as long as they have an active imagination and a desire to make clothes. Honestly, I’m both happy and amazed at the success of ‘Dressmaker’ in the past couple of months and how it’s managed to outrun some fabulous AAA games that also released recently. I now understand why, and you should definitely give this game a try.