Aptly named dressmaking sim Dressmaker was an unexpectedly massive success for developer Cozy Lives, led by married duo Sabrina Becker and Jonathan Hau-Yoon. With 17,530 user reviews averaging 98% positive a month after release, and over 15,000 average concurrent players still keeping it in Steam's top 100 even as a small single-player game, Dressmaker is a hit by every metric. On top of the game being extremely absorbing and satisfying, Becker reckons this was partly down to appealing to an undeserved group in games: women.

"We were definitely targeting women from the get-go," Becker tells me. "The fact that we have gotten so many men interested as well is just a great bonus. But women are such an underserved market in video games, even though women love video games. I think people sort of assume that women don't play games because they don't like them, but women just don't play games because there aren't games that are geared towards what they're interested in."

There's a surprisingly large population of women, not just young girls, on game platforms like Roblox engaging with "these dress-up games," Becker observes, "even though they don't have the best experience, because they are really craving that type of gameplay and there's nowhere else that offers it. That was one of the inspirations in making Dressmaker. If that's what they want, we can give that to them."

The top-rated Steam reviews for Dressmaker bear this out. A self-describer nursing home caretaker writes, "Dressmaker team, please know that you have created something extremely special here.

Source link