Cape Town’s Cozy Lives, working under the tutelage of Free Lives, has released Dressmaker to positive reviews as well as earned a spot on Steam’s global Top Sellers chart to add another bow to the prolific South African outfit and industry.

Dressmaker, the cozy sewing and design simulator from Cape Town-based studio Cozy Lives, launched on Steam for PC and Mac on 21 September 2026, and the early returns suggest South Africa has another hit on its hands. Within hours of release the game had cracked Steam’s global Top Sellers list landing at number four (as of September 22nd), ahead of heavyweight releases like Silent Hill: Townfall and Control: Resonant while carrying a “Very Positive” user rating on Steam, sitting around 95% approval.

The early critical response recorded by Metacritic is strongly positive, although the number of reviews remains small so soon after launch. The Metacritic aggregation currently lists two critic reviews: ScreenHub awarded 100, while Checkpoint Gaming awarded 75. Both are categorised as positive.

ScreenHub’s Leah J. Williams was particularly enthusiastic about the game’s implementation of sewing mechanics, describing Dressmaker as “a triumph of original game design” and awarding it 5/5 stars. Her review praised the game’s depth, noting that it goes well beyond a simplistic sewing simulator to explore the actual process and creativity of tailoring clothing.

Cozy Lives is not an entirely separate studio operating independently of Free Lives. Instead, it is a small team operating inside the South African indie developer, which is known internationally for games including Broforce, GORN, Genital Jousting and Terra Nil.

The project began as a prototype created by Terra Nil co-creator Jonathan Hau-Yoon, inspired in large part by the dressmaking expertise of his partner, Sabrina Becker. According to the team’s account in Engadget’s Indie Pitch, the first playable prototype was created in July 2025. A subsequent three-week development sprint with Free Lives colleagues produced a more substantial prototype that was released on itch.io. That prototype attracted around 30,000 downloads in its first month, while some videos from content creators reportedly passed one million views. The response ultimately convinced Free Lives to greenlight the project as a full game.

Pixelkin reported that Dressmaker had racked up over 400,000 wishlists ahead of release, and had already surpassed 6,000 concurrent players within hours of going live with that number still climbing. The outlet also noted the game ships with a substantial 35-plus hour story mode centred entirely on dressmaking rather than shop or business management, a deliberate design choice by the Cozy Lives team.

With this release out the door, Free Lives will shift focus to Stick it to the Stickman which leaves Early Access on September 23rd 2026.