I have been hearing about this game and I think it’s worth celebrating because:
A) It was made as a labor of love, spearheaded by a dev who wanted his wife with health issues to be able to make dresses again
B) it was made on a shoestring budget by a small team of devs (non-corpo)
C) It is staunchly anti-AI in its assets and code
D) Its assets are hand drawn with original foley and music composed for the game
Honestly the fact that its geared towards women is one of the less interesting things about it. I’m so happy for them and wish them every success.
As a woman who sews, it’s interesting to me that it was made to appeal to women because it touched my soul in a way that no other game had.
I’ve played all manners of games with vastly different gender compositions of player bases from Tarkov and Wardogs to Stardew Valley and Infinity Nikki. Dressmaker is the first game that I feel is both made with feminine aesthetics and skill expression that isn’t gated by preconceptions of what women are capable of. If you go to the dressmaker discord, the dresses there literally have the Mona Lisa painstakingly painted on it using piping.
Most games made primarily with women in mind tend to be simpler because of a circular assumption that women don’t play games with high skill expression and so game devs (who are majority male) will make simpler games. Dressmaker proved that skill expression and complexity is possible and desired even for a playerbase that statistically plays more mobile games.
I have been hearing about this game and I think it’s worth celebrating because:
A) It was made as a labor of love, spearheaded by a dev who wanted his wife with health issues to be able to make dresses again
B) it was made on a shoestring budget by a small team of devs (non-corpo)
C) It is staunchly anti-AI in its assets and code
D) Its assets are hand drawn with original foley and music composed for the game
Honestly the fact that its geared towards women is one of the less interesting things about it. I’m so happy for them and wish them every success.
As a woman who sews, it’s interesting to me that it was made to appeal to women because it touched my soul in a way that no other game had.
I’ve played all manners of games with vastly different gender compositions of player bases from Tarkov and Wardogs to Stardew Valley and Infinity Nikki. Dressmaker is the first game that I feel is both made with feminine aesthetics and skill expression that isn’t gated by preconceptions of what women are capable of. If you go to the dressmaker discord, the dresses there literally have the Mona Lisa painstakingly painted on it using piping.
Most games made primarily with women in mind tend to be simpler because of a circular assumption that women don’t play games with high skill expression and so game devs (who are majority male) will make simpler games. Dressmaker proved that skill expression and complexity is possible and desired even for a playerbase that statistically plays more mobile games.
Some of best things I’ve heard about this game really show how much point A is behind the success of this game: from helping elderly ladies in a nursing home to enjoy the creative process once again to letting someone experience their parent’s craft. It made the creative field of dressmaking accessible to those that wouldn’t have considered it otherwise, and made it accessible once again to those that could no longer access it.