Well hello there, I'm here with a lengthy review with pros, cons, suggestions, etc.. it's basically me rambling!
so first of all I have to say I absolutely love it! this is a game I've been looking for closer to a decade now; AND FINALLY SOMEONE DID IT!!!
Having full control over what fabric, patterns, colors, physically sewing things together, is just fascinating; and on top of that, you can get customers' feedback too!!
I love how every order has different requirements, so it adds to the challenge and keeps you from getting bored
But I also love the freedom of just creating whatever dresses I like without a certain request (so hear me out, what if there's a store section where you can put those dresses up for sale as ready-made gowns people can buy on the go)
okay actual game play: (mainly the sewing)
this is the biggest con imo
the sewing is unforgiving! if I stray 1mm away it drops from 100% to 30% so quick
sometimes the seam allowance is just so narrow to the point where I'm half sewing outside the fabric
some other times the dotted line I follow kinda changes it's shape a bit mid sewing (very tiny change, but with how unforgiving the sewing is the percentage drop is yikes )
that said I still could somehow get the quality to +90 although my back and my eyes are screaming at me after ( I also love how you can control the fabric with the keyboard and the mouse)
okay now onto some suggestions:
1) the obvious ones:
- threads with more color options
- more fabric options
- more accessories and more colors
- more floral patterns in more colors
(honestly you could just add a color swatch system, so we have one fabric/ accessory, and we could pick the color before purchasing)
- HIDDEN POCKETS? (I say yes)
- more dress designs (more on that later)
2) customization!!!!
- the ability to add embroidery
- appliques
- slits
- dantelle everything: sleeves, collars, etc..,. any hem basically
-(I've seen you work on this already) but different size dresses and taking measurements
- HEAR ME OUT, our own brand tags that we can customize and add to the gowns
3) gameplay and storylines:
- to be fair I hate it when you have to spend money on decorating the shop and believe that the game should focus on making the actual dresses, but I'd love to see some sort of customization like naming that shop, changing the furniture from presets, etc...
-adding a fame system? or maybe an affection system with customers? maybe both?
so for the fame system, the higher the fame the more new customers you can attract (if you don't want to create many characters there's a solution for that too, as I mentioned above we can add a ready-made section for dresses we freely design without commission; the revenue from those or the rate at which they get sold depend on the fame level)
for the affection level (this will be storyline heavy, so the more you please the customers with your dresses, the more you get to know about their story and hear tea spilled directly from them; and some stories can't be unlocked unless there's a certain affection level with these customers
- now the more dress designs thing I mentioned
as the story progresses, and the days turn into years, the trends in high society change; so will you choose to fall behind in the fashion industry or be the trend setter? kind of trope
basically as time goes on we get new designs
-okay this one may stray a bit from the game's purpose, but, what if as the dress maker, we can recommend jewelry, shoes, accessories, perfume, etc... to go with our dresses
- we can also make the customers ask for a certain color to be used
- okay this is a funny one:
so far all the characters we came across are female, but what if we have gentlemen ask for dresses as gifts for their wives/beloveds and if their significant other hates it we can ruin the relationship muahahahaha (evil laugh)
- (this one might be hard and tedious to execute) adding a picture of the character wearing the dress in the newspaper
4) things to make life easier and tidier:
-in the fabric store can we also add a filter by color? (unless you plan on having one fabric and then we can change the color from preset swatches)
- after we buy the fabric, we can really use some sort of categorization in the draft step and the pattern cutting step (so like a "sort by" option, or the same categories in the fabric store
- finally after we cut the fabric, can we still use the pattern pieces to cut another piece of fabric just so if the OG fabric looks bad in the final dress we can swap only those parts, instead of scrapping the entire thing and cutting it from the beginning
annnnnnnd we've finally reached the end, thank you for all your efforts and sorry for the lengthy comment, I really can't get enough of this game, so please please please make it come true
also here's a screenshot of a dress with buttons as a belt 