Daily Thread: The Sewing of Discontent

Simple but entertaining game with interesting concepts and far reaching ideas. It takes a couple of minutes to get used to the controls, and then some to actually get good at sewing, but that's the point. The apparent simplicity combined with some novel mechanisms depicts the brutality of the industrial era manual worker quite well. All in all, it is a fun and educational game, but also, it might be more than that, it might be a proof of concept for politically and educationally relevant games with bigger budgets in the future.

One of my friends got this for me because a) I'm from Manchester, b) I love sewing, and c) I spent a lot of time going around mills as a kid, so I'm basically the target audience! In this game, there are two modes: you play a seamstress trying to hit the impossible demands of her daily quota, and a resource management mode where you try to feed and house a family of eight on as little as 18 pence a day. I enjoyed it a lot! The sewing part can be very frustrating as you get more complicated garments in the same timeframe, but I'm taking that as commentary on the unreasonable demands on garment makers. You can sew six blankets in a day? Then surely you can do the same amount of FANCY COATS in that time! ... Yes the coats were my nemeses, yes I'm still mad about it. The tone is humourous while still highlighting the stupidity of the exploitation of workers, so it's not too dark! Which is good seeing as the resource management of this game has you doing the same calculations as "This War of Mine" on a smaller scale; which of my family members can I afford to let starve today so that we have enough resources to live tomorrow? I will say that there are quite a few typos ("sawing machine" in the tool tips, "pennnies" in the instructions, some others that I can't remember), and controlling the fabric that you're sewing is a nightmare. The rotation doesn't go the way around I think it should! And it's calibrated so that a) it only works when the piece is under the sewing machine, and b) your garment can swing *wildly* at the slightest tweak. But it's a very short, straightforward game, and I enjoyed it!

First of all, yes: the overarching gameplay with deciding who you're going to feed in your family and all that is very reminiscent of Papers Please and similar games, so if you like those you'll feel at home here. But here the moment to moment gameplay is completely different. The sewing takes about half a minute to get the hang of and after that is quite enjoyable. The actual gameplay could have a little more variety. Maybe if I got laid off and then had to work at a butchery killing pigs or something but overall the game is worth the asking price. Half of it goes to charity it seems, which is nice.

The Mario Party minigame Crazy Cutters but Textile-Mill-Sweat-Shop-based Papers Please. Glory to Arstotzka, now let's invent fast fashion

Excellent small game, It is simple but well executed (though it is sometimes a bit hard to find out why the cloth is still not 100% finished) and just hard enough. The immersive setting put us directly into the struggles of a woman holding her family while being a worker during the industrial revolution (struggles that still resonate today). Outside of the intelligent depiction and criticism of the period, the gameplay is mostly the sewing of clothes which is absorbing and kinda fun.

An interesting, almost conceptual, piece of work. The game serves as a critique of unchecked capitalism, exploring the consequences of a profit-driven society on individuals and communities via 19th century Manchester labor practices. It has a tense, anxious tempo, forcing you to constantly make life-or-death decisions, beating the unbeatable (mostly by letting the kids who are not making money starve). Nice dark humor and a great soundtrack. Also, the authors are giving half of game profits away to a clothing labor charity, so, money where the mouth is.

One playthrough should take around 20ish minutes to play through. It gets progressively harder to set aside the cash for newspapers (to progress the story) but after 2-3 attempts one should reach the end. Bad seamsters should be able to at least get by with big brains and 1 item sewn per day, but then I guess some kids will have to be sacrificed (not the one earning 3p though! since food is 2p, she's a net benefit to the family xD). Getting good at sewing should make the game much easier with 10p available daily to spend on food and doctors and rent and also to chuckle away at over-the-top news articles while progressing in the narrative. The game should therefore take under an hour to "experience", which might be okay to get on a sale or even at full price (but only for those very charitable, since half the proceeds are going to be donated to a seamsters NGO, or those who love supporting small up-and-coming indies). However, in the time when there are super polished games which give infinity hours of gameplay for just a few bucks, I'd recommend it only to those looking for something daring and weird, or with this specific theme. TL;DR VERDICT: Buy if you're looking for weird / innovative gameplay to get inspired, or wish to support the charity.

I would have really enjoyed the game, had the controlls not been fighting me every step of the way. I try to turn the garment one way, and it goes the opposite way, so I ended up spending half a work day trying to get a damn jacket to turn the way I'm asking it to.

It's a nice concept but the game ended after 20 minutes with 0 difficulty to reach final day with all achievements

Pretty interesting gameplay and a good lesson in Victorian-era history.