Dressmaker’s Chaotic Evil Endings Prove Why it’s Dominating Steam Right Now

Every service job has that one customer that really has it coming to them. Dressmaker is the rare game that offers you a hilarious opportunity for catharsis, should you be so inclined. On its surface, this is a cozy little sewing sim: You pick fabric, cut a pattern, and stitch buttons on by hand. You deliver a dress, then get a nice thank-you and a tip. It’s the kind of game you’d expect to play with a cup of tea and zero stakes for the ASMR vibes and quick burst of dopamine a la Powerwash Simulator or Unpacking. But then, when you meet a customer rude enough, you might just find yourself wondering if the fabric you select for their commission absolutely must match their specifications. It would seem the game’s developers were hoping you’d ask that question.

Dressmaker comes from Cozy Lives, a small team working inside Free Lives — the studio behind Broforce and GORN, games that run almost entirely on chainsaws and chaotic explosions. On launch day, the Cozy Lives team joked they’d been banned from Free Lives’ own social channels for shipping something “so devoid of violence, so flagrantly feminine and so painfully sincere.” Hmmm. Are we quite sure there’s no violence, here? (Also: Define “violence.” Crimes against fashion surely qualify.)

In the game, you start as a small-town seamstress with a single sewing machine and a waitlist of townsfolk, each one arriving with a specific request: A fabric preference, a color swatch, a trim style. Match all three, deliver on time, and your reputation climbs. The game plays at first like the gentlest possible business sim. That is, of course, before you start reading customer request cards less like checklists and more like dares.

Dressmaker’s 5 bad endings make the game worth playing

Sabotaging effectively in Dressmaker starts off simply. Practically, even. Buy a cheaper fabric than your customer wanted; sometimes, that’s just business. Then, flip a pattern piece against the grain on purpose. Or swap the trim you select for something close enough to pass as an honest mistake. It won’t be long before you’re giving a prim librarian a dress lined with stiff packing paper instead of soft cotton. When the librarian, upon wearing it, gets exiled from her quiet reading room for crinkling too loudly, will you reconsider your malevolent ways? Or will you swap someone’s mourning veil for rainbow pom-poms and sew squeaker pouches into her funeral attire? Perhaps you’ll build a farmer a “sturdy” work smock out of delicate silk organza and watch it shred when he attempts to show off his prize squash in front of the entire town? What’s the worst that could possibly happen? (Find out in the cutscenes you only get if you tank these commissions!)

Image: Cozy Lives/Free Lives

There are limits to how far you can take your revenge. When one Redditor attempted to hand a client a bright red dress instead of the requested camouflage ensemble, the game just kept sending it back for a redo: To be a stellar saboteur, you’ll need to be a bit more clever than just delivering the wrong color. Players are still finding the edges of the crafting system. But for now, it’d seem that leading customers on for a bit, giving some precisely what they want for their first orders, and then hitting others with a bad order when they least expect it makes for a much better sabotage storyline. Toe the line for a moment; it’s just setup for a better bit later. Consider your “good” dresses the tutorial; the game’s five unlockable sabotage endings are the real game, here. Once you realize that, you won’t be able to savor sewing a librarian a nice, professional blazer ever again.