Oh man, what a week.

If you missed it: I announced the secret dream project I'd been working on for over a year, AND I shipped a build you can actually play. Only a week after Chapter 7, no less.

This weekend was also busy for me personally on top of all that. I had to make a trip to Tokyo for some things and finally traveled back home, all with a two year old daughter in tow. I am exhausted. But I can't skip the devblog, there's way too much to share.

Wait, new game?

You didn't hear? StrongGirls Tactics. There's an alpha on itch you can play right now if you're an Ultra sub, and it opens up to all tiers on September 6th.

https://www.patreon.com/StrongGirlsFMGVisualNovel/posts/stronggirls-new-166979075

262 people have already been playing it, and you seem to generally like it. The only real negative comment I've gotten is that it ends. Ha! So I'd better get the full game ready.

Ultra tier, play now: https://stronggirls.itch.io/stronggirls-tactics/patreon-access

⭐ Please wishlist on Steam ⭐

I'm going to say this loud, because it matters more than anything else in this post: Wishlist please!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5076520/StrongGirls_Tactics

I still can't quite believe I have a Steam page. A female muscle growth tactics RPG, on Steam, out in the open where anyone can find it. That's not a thing I thought I'd ever get to say.

Wishlisting is free and takes two seconds, and it is genuinely the single biggest thing you can do to help this game succeed. Steam's algorithm decides who ever sees this game based almost entirely on that number. If you only do one thing after reading this, make it that.

Wishlist. Please. I'm not too proud to beg. 🙏I'll add whatever you want to the game just wishlist it hah!

Tactics: your feedback, already in the build

You played, you reported, I fixed. Here's what went in this week.

Crashes and blockers:

the weapon durability desync that nearly everyone hit is fixed (the game was handing out shared item templates instead of copies, so one bandit's axe wear leaked into every future axe and into your shop purchases, which is also why it seemed to "fix itself on restart").

the battle-prep inventory crash,

the ability-unlock crashthat got reported as "only happens with Eira at level 10",

Bigger maps scroll with cursor now

Economy and balance:

gold inflation turned out to be three compounding bugs at once, all gone.

Double level-ups from a single kill are no longer possible.

And gauntlets lost the 75% second-hit penalty, which fired on every even hit and made the combat forecast lie to you. Every hit is full damage now and the forecast is honest, so Karin got a real buff out of it.

Calendar: months are uniformly 4 weeks again. Everyone was reading the old variable 2-week months as a glitch, which is fair enough.

Controls: edge-panning now works unconditionally, plus WASD and arrow key panning, plus Q/E to cycle the camera through your units so a straggler is always one keypress away.

New content:

massive scene polish across all 8 playable chapters with new CGs, music and dialogue.

A new Saturday night sleep beat and dream pool.

18 giant dream clips, one per girl, rank-5 gated (you asked for giantess content, it is there, it is glorious).

A voice fix where the entire dynamic-debate pool had been exporting zero lines, 123 lines silently missing, plus 318 new lines for the rewritten chapters. And 11 new CGs for chapters 5 through 8 with two new backgrounds.

The random map generator got four full passes. Walls and houses no longer slice through forests, and ruins are a proper theme now with breakable walls.

None of this is in your hands yet. I plan to patch the itch build this week, and I'll let you know as soon as the changes land.

And StrongGirls Visual Novel?

Still here, still moving. Chapter 7 has been out for two weeks now and there have still been no major bugs, which for a release that size is honestly the best outcome I could have asked for. Thank you to everyone who reported the small stuff.

This week I've been working on the fan-voted Akira side story. Akira won the poll and at first I worried about a relative blank slate character and how she could fit the story. But then I remembered, she knows Hino and Aiko and surely she is curious about Hino's new size. I am at about 1200 lines now for the first draft.

The Chapter 7 feedback post is still open too, and I'm still reading it. If you haven't left your thoughts on the chapter yet, go do it, it's shaping what Chapter 8 becomes.

Go check out Fino's stuff

https://www.patreon.com/aiworkshop/posts/raccoon-studio-1-167389401

Quick shout to a friend. Fino helped develop the StrongGirls model, as well as the new one we use for the multi-girl renders, and he's currently working on more surprises for me that I can't talk about yet.

He has his own patreon which by supporting him, will enable him to further push the boundaries of OPEN SOURCE MUSCLE GIRL AI CONTENT! What a hero!

His beautiful Raccoon Studio just got its 1.2 update:

Built-in photo editing. Color manipulation, cropping, auto image enhance. Basically a Lightroom Lite bolted onto the studio, and it's simple enough that new users can actually use it.

A Runpod template, so you no longer need a beefy NVIDIA card. AMD users, laptop users, anyone: you can run it now. He reckons it's the cheapest way going to generate images and video freely.

A CivitAI model downloader is coming in September, so you'll be able to pull in checkpoints and LoRAs from other creators.

He's also got a Discord where people genuinely steer what gets built next. If any of the above sounds like your thing, go give him a follow:

<<FINO PATREON CLICK HERE>>

TL;DR

Ultra tier: play the Tactics alpha now — https://stronggirls.itch.io/stronggirls-tactics/patreon-access

Everyone: alpha opens September 6th

WISHLIST ON STEAM https://store.steampowered.com/app/5076520/StrongGirls_Tactics seriously, it's free and it's the biggest thing you can do for this game 🙏

Tactics got four crash fixes, an economy overhaul, better controls, new voice lines, new CGs, and a much smarter map generator

SGVN Akira side story got first draft. Art pass coming soon!

Go look at Fino's Raccoon Studio 1.2 update, it runs on anything now https://www.patreon.com/aiworkshop/posts/raccoon-studio-1-167389401

Tell me what you think in the comments or on Discord. The playtest feedback is already shaping the next build of Tactics, and I read all of it. A small 'I want giantess content' made me go make it so you never know, your random thoughts might become reality!

Thanks for being here. Now let me go sleep for a week.

-Jon

P.S.

I return from Japan with loads of PC parts. I had to sign a wafer that I wasn't bringing this stuff to relisted countries when I got my tax refund haha. Compute power is the weapon of the future.

We will be adding a lot of VRAM to stronggirls studio soon. This means you will get the new models and possibly something more! Stay tuned.