Game: Cottonville
Genre: Adventure, Arcade, RPG, Simulation
System: Nintendo Switch/Switch 2 (Also on Steam (Windows))
Developer | Publisher: RedDeer.Games
Age Rating: US Everyone | EU 3+
Price: US $10.99 | UK £9.89 | EU € 10,99
Release Date: July 17th, 2025
Review code used, with many thanks to RedDeer.Games.
Cottonville is a gardening/fashion sim, where you grow your own plants to make fabrics and dyes, before creating clothing masterpieces. Here at LadiesGamers, we’ve reviewed a lot of RedDeer.Games, sew, let’s dig in and see what we can stitch together.
Starting Afresh in Cottonville
Cottonville starts with a cutscene, which explains how an old friend gets in touch and invites you to Cottonville to take over the running of the boutique/workshop, Cotton Atelier. Escaping the hustle of city life, you arrive at your new home. It’s not a long cutscene, but it can be skipped if required. Can you pet the cat? Unfortunately not.
However, before you can get growing and sewing, you need to create your avatar. There are different skin tones, eye shapes, lashes, eyebrows and mouths, as well as a multitude of hair styles and colours. You will be able to change your hairstyle and colour within the game, as well as change into one of your clothing creations.
When you arrive in Cottonville you’ll get explanatory notes as to how to garden, open the shop, make clothes, and sleep, etc.
How Does Your Garden Grow?
You arrive in Cottonville with no money, however, you are given some seeds and other materials to start your new life. There are three planting areas, with the main one being near the well, in front of the Cotton Atelier. You’ll need to till the soil, plant the seed and finally water. There’s enough water in the watering can for 6 patches, so you’ll need to visit the well several times to water all the crops. I found the gardening aspect slightly awkward, as it was sometimes difficult to highlight the patch to water and filling up the watering can took too long.
As you wander around Cottonville, you’ll find forageable plants, which is helpful whilst waiting for yours to grow. However, wild flowers will not yield as much as those grown in your garden patches. Once you make some money, you’ll be able to buy more seeds at Poppy’s Petals in the centre of Cottonville.
Money, seeds, fabrics and clothes are also given as achievement rewards. There are various different achievements, from planting seeds and watering your garden to collecting patterns and spending money in the shops. Receiving these rewards is a welcome bonus and breaks the sometimes grinding nature of the gameplay.
A Stitch in Cottonville Time
You can use cotton, bamboo and flax to turn into fabric at the spinning wheel, with the other flowers being used as dyes. Clothes are made at the sewing machine, but you’ll need a pattern to create anything. Patterns can be bought at Spindle & Needle, and some patterns will have different colour versions. New patterns appear every few days. Luckily, you will have a few to start with, so you can start stocking the Cotton Atelier.
You can open your shop when you choose, and very quickly customers will materialise. Each customer will have three requirements for their new outfit: style, fabric and colour. You can check your current stock, or go into the ‘staff only’ workshop and create something on the sewing machine which meets their requirements. You’ll get a star for each requirement matched, and this will lead to a bonus in the selling price.
Trying to find something in your inventory or creating something new on the sewing machine is the highlight of Cottonville. Quite often, especially in the early game, you might only be able to match one or two requirements. However, there is definitely a satisfaction when you match all three (even if it is selling the customer something which looks very similar to what they are currently wearing!).
Gameplay
With the initial on-screen help and in-game hints book, the instructions and controls are clearly given. Cottonville plays well in both docked and handheld mode, with the text large and clear enough to read on the small screen. However, there is no touchscreen functionality.
When using the sewing menu, items would scroll out of sight, and it was a bit fiddly to get them back. Once I had completed all the Spindle & Needle shopping achievements, I couldn’t exit the shop menu, and no more clothes appeared, even though I didn’t have all the patterns. Hopefully, these are just pre-release niggles and will be ironed out very soon.
Cottonville autosaves when you sleep, but there is no manual save.
An in-game hour is just over a real-time minute, and the game pauses whilst in the menus. However, for such a cute and cosy game, I did feel slightly pressured with the time ticking minute by minute. After a few in-game days, I found a comfortable routine of planting and watering, foraging en route to town to buy new patterns and then opening my fashion boutique.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that Cottonville is exceptionally cute and wholesome. Creating clothes and trying to meet customer requirements was a delight, but the tedious nature of the gardening aspect took away some of that shine.
Final Verdict: I Like it 
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