Dressmaker, sewing sim from Terra Nil co-creator, launches on Steam

The game is the brainchild of Terra Nil co-creator Jonathan Hau-Yoon and dressmaking expert Sabrina Becker. According to the Q&A, Becker turned to games after a chronic illness, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, forced her to move away from professional costume design.

In Dressmaker, players control nearly every part of the creative process, Jonathan told Engadget. That includes designing a dress, choosing fabrics for each panel, sewing the pieces together and finishing it with trims, buttons, bows and other accessories. Players can make commissioned dresses for a town of women with different tastes and aesthetics, or make their own off-rack dresses to sell.

The development team is small. Anja Nanna Venter Rausch, a producer at Free Lives, told Engadget that the full-time core team from Free Lives is only three people: Ruan Rothman, Sara Laubscher and Jonathan. Sound designer Jason Sutherland is also involved while working on about four projects at the same time. Sabrina has been the vision holder for the project and consulted on and quality-assessed all game design decisions. External contractors include writer Kerstin Hall and composer Meydän. Free Lives provided additional art and design, production and media and community support, and friends helped with footage capture and QA, according to the Q&A.

Work on Dressmaker began with a first playable prototype in July 2025. Jonathan said the team uploaded it to itch.io to see whether there was an audience. After about a month of deliberation, Free Lives greenlit the project in September 2025.

The origin of the game is personal. Jonathan said he and Sabrina have been dating for more than seven years, and when they first met she was wearing a dress she had made herself. Over the years, she pointed out costume changes in movies and how they support stories, discussed historical accuracy and modifications, and told him about the environmental impact of fast fashion, polyester and other synthetic fibers. She also lamented skills being lost as mending and customizing clothing became less common, and introduced him to YouTube dress historians and dressmakers. He said he was drawn to the community's excitement, energy and creativity and wondered what it would be like in game form, where someone could have some of the creative expression of making custom dresses without having to buy machines and fabrics or cut fabric out on their hands and knees on the floor.

During a vacation after shipping the arid update to Terra Nil, Jonathan made a basic prototype. Players could arrange patterns on fabric, rotate them to the grain line, or not if there was not enough fabric, and cut the pieces out. He added a 3D mannequin that players could drag pieces onto to see the dress as a 3D model. A friend encouraged him to make a TikTok video about it, even though he did not think there was much there yet.

The video received more than 600,000 views across TikTok and Instagram, Jonathan said. The comments were filled with people asking what the game was called, according to the Q&A. Engadget's Indie Pitch features interviews with developers of in-production or recently released games; the Dressmaker Q&A was published on Sept. 21.