Cape Town studio Free Lives has a cosy hit as Dressmaker passes 21,000 Steam reviews

Free Lives, the Cape Town studio best known for the action game Broforce, has a hit in a very different genre. Dressmaker, a sewing game it released on Steam on 21 September, had 21,004 user reviews across all languages by 3 November, 20,741 of them positive, according to a count by Hypertext. That is 98.7% positive and earns Steam's top rating, "Overwhelmingly Positive".

For local readers the game costs R149.99 on Steam in South Africa and runs on Windows and macOS. There is no console version yet.

Reviews are not sales, and neither Free Lives nor Valve has published how many copies Dressmaker has sold. Still, more than 21,000 people bothered to leave a review in the first six weeks, and almost all of them recommend it.

The two review counts in circulation are not the same statistic. Hypertext's 21,004 is the all-language total as of 3 November. Steam's own store page, which counts English-language reviews by default, showed 99% positive from 14,402 reviews on 4 November. Of those English reviews, 9,990 were posted in the previous 30 days. The store page is the narrower figure. It does not replace the all-language total, and neither figure is a sales number.

A quieter label for a loud studio

Free Lives publishes Dressmaker, but the Steam store lists the developer as Cozy Lives. According to Hypertext, the studio uses that name to keep its family-friendly work separate from the violent, adults-only games it is better known for.

The split is a label, not a new company with a published address of its own in the coverage. The publisher on the store is still Free Lives. The developer credit is Cozy Lives. Readers who know the studio from Broforce are looking at the same Cape Town house, filing a sewing game under a different name so it is not sitting in the same aisle as the shooters.

The game itself is gentle. Steam describes it as a crafting game in which players "choose fabric, cut out pattern pieces and sew them all together", inspired by real dressmaking. It is single-player, has a mouse-only option, needs no timed input and is offered in English, Simplified Chinese and Japanese.

Those store tags are the opposite of the studio's usual pitch. Broforce, GORN and Anger Foot are built on timing, noise and a high body count. Dressmaker, on the page Steam is selling, asks for a mouse, does not demand quick reactions, and is playable by one person. The coverage does not include a hands-on from this newsroom. The description is the store's.

Still growing after launch

Most of the English reviews arrived well after launch week. Steam's page on 4 November said 9,990 of the 14,402 English reviews were posted in the previous 30 days. Launch was 21 September. A pile of reviews landing a month later is the pattern of a game people are still finding, not of a launch-week spike that then goes quiet. It is still a review pattern. It is not a chart position, and Steam has not published a South African sales rank for the title.

Steam has also placed Dressmaker in bundles with Paralives, PowerWash Simulator 2 and Cult of the Lamb, which puts a Cape Town release next to some of the best-known games in the genre. A bundle is a store placement. It is not a statement of how many of those bundles sold, and Valve has not given that number.

What it means for local game development

Free Lives' catalogue already includes Broforce, GORN, Terra Nil and Anger Foot, and the studio runs the annual SA Game Jam, which drew 44 entries this year. Dressmaker adds a cosy game to that list, and gives local developers a recent example of a South African studio reaching a wide Steam audience outside the action genre.

The jam figure is a headcount of entries, not of players. Forty-four games entered this year's SA Game Jam. Dressmaker is a commercial release on the same studio's slate, six weeks old on 4 November, with a review score the store marks as its highest band. The two facts sit next to each other. One is a local event the studio runs. The other is a shipping game with an international review pile. They are not the same kind of success, and the article does not treat the jam as evidence for the review total.

What is still unknown is the commercial result. Free Lives has not released sales or revenue figures, has not said whether console versions are planned, and Steam review totals cannot be converted reliably into copies sold. The firm numbers are the ones on the store and in Hypertext's count: 21,004 reviews across all languages, 98.7% positive, an English-only store figure of 99% from 14,402 reviews on 4 November, and a South African price of R149.99. Anything past that, including how many people in South Africa bought it, has not been published. Hypertext's 20,741 positive reviews out of 21,004 are what produce the 98.7%. Steam's English page, read on 4 November, was 99% of 14,402. Both can be true because they count different sets of reviews. Six weeks separate the 21 September release from the 3 November all-language count. Neither figure says how many copies the R149.99 price has sold. The studio has not published a sales figure.