Golden Lining by GarySavage

 

Fan cover made by Clavietika

Despite her lack of content in the main game, Jane, the gender-bent version of John has gained a certain popularity in the Student Transfer community ad the predetermined choice for MTF storylines thanks to John's protagonism in the game and the inclusion of Jane's Tina Koya uniform sprite since v4, which makes her a great choice to use without using side characters or additional sprites that might not fit in the main game.

Golden Lining chooses Jane as the protagonist but changes the sprite for a similar-looking girl to add the possibility of use CGs from her source game since the original Jane's CGs are forbidden for use in scenarios to avoid spoilers. Another advantage of Jane is the number of similar sprites to her coming from the same artist working in the same GIGA visual novel series, allowing the writer to pick another "Jane" in this case without making the choice look too out of place.

Story-wise, Golden Lining shows an alternate timeline where John does not get his heirloom's spellbook but is instead gender-bent due to the side effect of the magic energy contained on a doll after accidentally getting seen as a witch hunter by Lin, a paranoic Witch of the Chinese tradition.

John wakes up as a woman the next day and escapes out of nervousness, he meets Lin, but she doesn't know to revert John back, but since John has now the magic power of the Chinese tradition thanks to the energy absorbed by the doll, she promises him to teach her magic, the issue? Lin's magic is not as powerful as Blackwell's magic, and even then, it requires practice.

As the case is with Spitting Image, this set up is pretty great by the fact that avoids a lot of the escalation issues presented in the main game like characters not using certain spells or commands when they can to out of pure principle or simply because they do not think about doing so, John's magic is not anymore godlike and omnipotent, but something that needs to be worked on and that will not give John everything that he wants, allowing the reader to enjoy the story without recurring too much to the suspension of disbelief.

Golden Lining is in summary a 2-hour introduction of a story yet to be made, but even then doesn't suffer from any slow pacing issues, all this time is used to introduce the new characters like Lin and her friend Edward, as well as the place they come from, the Chinese restaurant Red Lotus, John's doll incident happens actually quite fast and afterward the scenario focuses in his arrival home and transformation in the morning, a great scene that shows going from confusion, to shock, and panic allowing the reader to feel and experience all those emotions in almost real-time; a perfect example of how to do a TF sequence and a character's reaction to an abrupt change and contrasts with a lot of rushed out sequences in TF material.

In general, Golden Lining is part of the new generation of scenarios that provide amazing and more natural pacing to the story compared to previous rushed v3 content, all scenes are given their own space, their own dialogue, and we get to meet and understand all the characters.

There are some scenes that Gary said are set up for future plot points, everything that happens in the scenario happens for a specific reason, there are no scenes wasted in the whole 2 hours; even then, readers might get confused since a lot of the reasons things happen are not answered in the state the scenario is now.

Besides all the ideas Golden Lining brings to the table story-wise, it also introduces a lot of graphic elements to make the visual format less stale, starting from Jane's CGs, there are also a lot of edited backgrounds, animations, phone menus, transitions, and visual clues to show character's feelings more properly.

Golden Lining is currently on hiatus and therefore not because of its quality, but because it finishes too soon (in terms of the general plot) it might not deserve a spot yet as a Student Transfer Classic but is still recommended as it is to anybody who enjoys MTF content, it is hoped the project gets continued one day.

Gold Troubles by Xablerot

 

Described as a teaser to practice with RenPy at its time of publication, Gold Troubles gives us a scene where John shows the remote device to Brad, getting it stolen by Kiyoshi after he accidentally crashes into him.

The remote gender swaps Brad when it falls, and John and Brad have to retrieve it from Kiyoshi who has taken it and escaped to examine it. The dialogues and interactions have not been worked completely, but the idea of having to retrieve a powerful device does sound actually quite fun.

The scenario lasts 5 minutes and has not been updated ever since.

Cafe Chaos by Supertails

 

When John is wakened up by Katrina in a rush, he is taken to a Coffee Shop where Casey, presumably one of John's friends is having a breakdown, Katrina uses the remote to swap John's body with her and take her place while she recovers so John can take part of an event.

The scenario gives around 20 small choices that can go from John telling Michelle the truth about the swap, John accepting less or more memories from Casey to be able to go through the job, and change John's level acceptations about Katrina actions.

Little to no background is given about the rest of the characters or the situation, but it is assumed but this is placed somewhere around KatSwap where both Katrina and John have possession of the remote.

No placeholders are added to any of the routes (or decision flairs), ending up instead in a message saying "End of Current Content" before going to the main screen, implying that the author might have not had further intentions to update the scenario.

In general, all the story does is proposing the idea of John swapping with a cute, maid cafe cat girl, even when swaps have been done in the main game for more casual and less important reasons, the setup the author offers doesn't go anywhere before the scenario ends to let us see the advantages of it properly.

With a duration of 15 minutes and no further development, this scenario does not add too much to the Student Transfer catalog.

Tales of John the Wizard by IoloNight (PaintedNecroz)

 

The issues that a lot of scenarios experience are the lack of editing and rushed pacing, scenario authors end up writing things rapidly without giving themselves space for proofreading or animation testing and this can end up in static animations without transitions that can make a scenario feel unnatural and even create recurrent reading issues like lack of periods (even beyond the grammar limits that can still happen to writers with English as a secondary language like us).

Unfortunately, Tales of John the Wizard is one of those scenarios, and its amount of ideas doesn't actually compensate for the lack of editing either way.

After a fun self-conscious introduction from John and Sandra, the story starts with John discovering his powers and trying to decide who is the best person he can talk about it, the player is given to chose between 3 options, visiting either Brad, Katrina, or Kiyoshi.

The Katrina route ends up in John morphing himself into his girl version to prove to her about the existence of magic, after some teasing from Katrina, the route ends in a placeholder.

With Brad, John decides not to morph himself because he doesn't feel comfortable as a girl (even when he did change himself in the Katrina route without issues), and Brad volunteers to be the subject of the spell instead. Apparently Zoey comes in and reveals she was listening them all along, after seeing Brad as her little sister, she takes him to try her clothes upstairs.

This is a fun idea I haven't seen explored in other scenarios yet, Zoey seeing Brad becoming a small girl like her, and even taking the initiative instead of obeying him in anything he says since he is "the big bro", PaintedNecroz also has a fun take on Zoey, who thinks John used magic on Kiyoshi to make him go away every time she approaches him.

All of these things would have made for a fun route, but this route also ends right there on a placeholder.

The last route is the most interesting of the three, after meeting up with Kiyoshi in his house to reveal him he has magic, Kiyoshi tells him he has something to reveal as well; while some people might think Kiyoshi has gotten the remote, what actually Kiyoshi got was the company of an alien bunny girl that was exiled from the moon and has to stay with Kiyoshi from now on, making both of them require the help of John's magic abilities.

The scenario ends up there in all three routes without any actual development from them. PaintedNecroz mentioned making the 21-minute scenario in no less than 1 hour and a half counting reading the guide and so forth, and it hasn't been updated ever since.

While even short scenarios are still recommended due to the small ideas they propose, there are no ideas that actually stand out aside from the Kiyoshi route, making the scenario in general completely skippable for any readers in most of the cases.

Spitting Image by Bricks

 

Fan cover made by Clavietika

While it's true that a big part of the TF community is focused on the sexual parts of the transformations alone, there are also people who like the social parts that come from it.

Like v3 and v4's Antics route, v4's Monitor, or v5's Magic Sayaka, Spitting Image focuses on interactions around the school including John's classmates and friends as part of the magic casting rather than merely on having two main leads subject of a TF event. The writing has a very similar tone to one of these routes, just a couple of students playing around with magic, for better or worse.

The story centers on an alternative path to Antics where John decides to tells his friends about the book, John decides to use the morph spell to prove them magic is real, and out of pure mischievousness, the friends pick up Sayaka, later in Kiyoshi's house they take a photo with John (looking as Sayaka) being around with Kiyoshi and they spread it around the school.

Unfortunately, it seems Maria sees John's transformation the day before and records a video that uses to blackmail John, fearing for his life due to witch hunters if the video gets released, John accepts and morphs into Yui so Maria can take compromising photos of her to blackmail Claus and allow her to publish any kind of news articles she wants.

John arrives to Kiyoshi's house and tells his friends, who propose him to morph into Maria to get fingerprint access to her phone and delete any copies that might exist of those pictures.

The story promised a strong and interesting conflict with relatively high stakes (that go up to the roof in a parody "upcoming trailer" at the end of the scenario where John tells Kiyoshi that wants to destroy Tina Koya) in a slice of life kind of setting, but it seems the scenario has been abandoned and touched since.

Aside from capturing pretty relatively well the style and mood of certain ST routes, this scenario also counts with interesting features, like John not being able to use the mind control spell since it is a spell from another "school of magic" and requiring practice from John before he can use them. This is an interesting limitation that can avoid escalation issues that are sometimes presented in the main game where characters have the opportunity to use mind control but they don't think about doing so or simply don't do it "by principle".

The story presents several choices to pick from but these do not trigger any special flairs or routes and show different events going back to the main, linear story of the scenario. While some people might not like having choices that do not affect the plot people who like to have able to see different character's actions will find this a nice detail. Some people might complain about the linear story stelling as well instead of the usual ramification in visual novels but the truth is that the scenario was left up too early to get any more branches or endings.

Even when left alone in a premature state and clocking only at 36 minutes of reading Spitting Image is a fun little ride that fans of these routes can enjoy and get inspired from, personally, I think I enjoy it a bit more than Antics.

Sister Swap by Tgsquirtle

 

Fan cover made by Clavietika

Following the example of the main game, some authors started creating some scenarios with several stories and lore, and Sister Swap had big ambitions for what its story was going to be.

Based on the scenario thread, Sister Swap was one of the first scenarios to ever be made after Stuck and even had a general outline and even a big twist planned before the author dropped it completely.

There are several routes in this scenario raging a variety of concepts, not just a Sister Swap, which is only the event that starts things out. In this world, the protagonist is Riley and the swap starts with his sister Allison in a discussion Riley started while being picked up by his sister, it's easier being a girl.

Turns out that Riley comes from a family of mages that can change reality and saying "I wish" out loud triggered the first manifestation of his powers, a body swap with his sister.

The summary of the routes goes more or less like this:

-In one of the routes, Riley goes to his house neighbor Marty and due to their sexual desires they end up having sex, Marty and Riley (in Allison's body) swap again due to Riley's still unconscious powers, and they have to act like they other while they figure out what is happening.

In another route, is Allison (in Riley's body) that ends up having sex with her friend Cassie due to their own sexual desires, after that, Cassie and Allison go back to Riley's house and ask Riley to swap them so Cassie can fuck herself, they believe Riley has he power since when they try to swap between themselves, it does not work, Riley accepts with the condition of borrowing Allison's body for a little longer, Allison accepts saying that she wouldn't mind having Riley's body permanently.

In another route (ditto), Riley (in Allison's body) asks Yuuna, one of her Mom's friends to swap with him out of curiosity, Riley goes to her home and has sex with her husband Greg, the next day after waking up in her bed Riley goes back to his home to ask Yuuna to swap back, Yuuna doesn't remember anything, neither Allison in his body, he tries saying I wish out loud, it doesn't work, what happened? According to Tgsquirtle, what was planned for the route was revealing that Riley liked Yuuna's life so much that he unconsciously wished to stay as her and he affected the memories of other people as nothing had happened.

This is one of the first interesting ideas the scenario shows, an interesting approach in Reality Change based on a subconscious wish.

Another swap that happens is Riley (In Allison's body) swapping with his mom out of curiosity, her mother tells him about his power and she accepts, afterwards, her little sister, Olivia, asks her to get bathed together since she's used to it since she is still a kid, Riley first refuses but due to his sister's cries he accepts and does her hair showing the first glances of maternal instincts.

The last route shows Olivia growing up to an adult by accident due to Riley's words and ends up in Olivia morphing her mother into a kid while trying to trade places of mother and daughter so she doesn't have to be told to go to bed or being bossed around by her again, Olivia seems to have the same powers as Riley and be simply saying it, she can morph people, control their actions, and also their memories, this plants an interesting villain that has basically the mind of a child but also unlimited power. Unfortunately, morphs done in this route violates the TFGS rules due to the depiction of minors in sexual situations, which led to ST developers removing it. The option for the author to rerelease the scenario edited is still there, or even continuing it, but according to Tgsquirtle the project is now completely dead.

The main plot also depicts Yoshinori as a wise grandfather that Riley calls in for help, Yoshinori teaches him about how he will be able to control time and space in the future and how he will teach him to control his powers, he uses magic to make one of Riley's Mom's friends go into a vacation and he morphs into her so he can take care of the family in secret due to issues that happened with her mother.

All the routes end up there until I explained them, the scenario is no more than 30 minutes long so far, but Tgsquirtle mentioned a whole outline they had for the story in which (spoilers) it's explained that Riley's dad is actually Olivia, morphed by his brother, Riley's uncle, in undefined events, apparently, Riley's uncle had the same abilities as his father and developed a God complex, even then, his whereabouts were unknown in the final state of the scenario.

Riley's dad, Claus, lost all his memories and he would be able to recover them only as an adult, once he grows up as Olivia, making his own wife take care of after him.

Tgsquirtle mentioned being reading a lot of fictionmania stories at the time which inspired the routes in the scenario, even the story "where someone gets turned into a baby and loses their memories until they reach adulthood". 

In general, the execution of all these concepts was no better than your average TF doujin, characters act rapidly, nonsensically, thinking only about sex, the animation was very limited and poor, with static characters across the screen even in sex scenes, but bringing up all those TF concepts and ideas into a visual novel narrative was an interesting idea that was getting known at the time thanks to PS and ST, the whole family magic and lore of the scenario was vivid and interesting. Overall, even when not playable anymore, this scenario shows an important step for the ST community and TF in general.

Scenario Example by Kmalloc

Scenarios were originally intended for developers so they could write OOC stuff but still have it run in the ST engine, the original plan never considered public contributions. 

Later, when people started modding the game editing the main game code to create their own stories, Scenarios were introduced in V2 as a single-file, no-custom-asset thing. The rpy story file that was loaded to the game would usually contain the most information needed.

In V3 established the idea of include a selected few scenarios to bundle them withing the game, since then each main release has been including different bundled scenarios to show newcomers about what it can be done in scenario mode, bringing up more people to the community and animating them to create their own scenarios.

V2 had no scenarios bundled yet, the only one that came with the game was this 10-second example explaining the correct way to edit rpy files, today, ite has been replaced by the tutorial scenario made by the new developers.

Scenario Example is a small curiosity that shows a bit of the history of the beginnings of ST and that ended up creating a community of TF creators helping to keep the game alive between updates.

Alien Jess by SaionjiH

 

Just like Natswap in the main canon route, Alien Jess proposes the idea of losing control and identity as an adult, but it doesn't move past showing the single idea.

John goes to Kat's house to tell her about the remote and find Jess instead, to test the remote he decided to clone himself on her, and due to her protests when seeing herself morphed, John mind controls her so she feels comfortable in his body and gets his own mental abilities.

When Katrina arrives, John tells the truth, but in a turn of events, Jess decides to lie and make John take her place because due to her programming she doesn't feel comfortable as a kid anymore, she also uses the remote to don't let him use the remote to swap back if he ever manages to get it back or say anything about who he really is to anybody, still, Jess lets him conserve his identity.

In summary, the scenario is too brief, inconsistent, and illogical to be considered worth checking, the idea of John experiment on a child is also something out of character him, but some might prefer this take in the accidental adult to kid swap in contrast to the feeble idea present of Natswap where John swaps with Natsumi only to let her play video games, which has been considered a dumb move on him by some part of the community.

John Shortcut by ddendejoder

 

This 5-minute scenario plants the idea of what could have been a fun plot of MC and GB, even when out of character for John.

Basically, John decides to morphs himself into a girl and change the memory of everybody except his friend Katrina to prank her, the scenario ends just as it starts.

The idea sounds like an interesting concept if played well, Katrina would doubt her reality and what happened, which could play for very interesting scenarios and developing as a character if nobody believes her or remembers the existence of John.

This is more of a simple idea than an actual scenario, but it's a good idea.

Kiyoshi Gaiden by Pegasus

Despite the infamous reputation the character of Kiyoshi has in the canon game and even more thanks to the scenario Harem, a lot of people have gotten away of Kiyoshi-related stories, but one of the first published scenarios actually depicts a very fun take on the character and his surroundings.

In this scenario, Kiyoshi is abducted by aliens instead of John, and around 1 ending and three placeholders are given in 15 minutes of playtime.

Some people might expect a dream-ish hell hole like in Harem since Kiyoshi is the character that seems is the one that is most expected to abuse the power of the remote like Harem did, and he does in one of the routes, but at the difference of the previous scenario, the author actually acknowledges Kiyoshi's mischievousness and shows empathy for the students that are going to be mind-controlled by him and in an actually funny way. The story ends there on a placeholder, but for what it seems like, it seems that the author planned in Kiyoshi actually learn from his action, but nothing can be said aside from that.

The other routes are less impressive, Kiyoshi becoming Zoey, breaking the remote, and meeting Brad, which seemed to point into ID or PD but it ends too soon as well.

In the other one, Kiyoshi tells John about the remote and they use the possession function of the remote (explained in a conveniently and clever sci-fi way) and also ends soon in a placeholder.

Although the scenario doesn't contain enough content to be considered a story on its own, it offers a lot of great jokes, even some at Kiyoshi himself. In the only ending, the scenario has now he decides to not accept the remote and asks the alien bunny girl to have sex with her instead of proposing interspecies intercourse since the alien can't get data now with Kiyoshi experimenting with the remote, she decides to examine him through his rectal cavity instead.

In general, this scenario is everything that Harem should have been, it has a more human depiction of Kiyoshi showing that a funny story can actually be made around him possessing the remote, and overall offers a good, short blueprint for any people interested in writing a story with him as a protagonist.

Harem by AmneLeGrand3

 

In the story of the Student Transfer community, Harem has become one of the most well-known scenarios although the reasons why are rather unfortunate, and Harem has become for a lot of people to what not to do with a scenario.

The story follows Kiyoshi in a rampage of actions that in the end do not make too much sense and confuse the reader. The scenario is written as if no second thoughts were given about each plot element, the concept is so primitive that most people will be able to identify with it due to its dream-like logic throughout the whole story.

What makes Harem bad for a lot of readers is how things are developed, Kiyoshi ends up mind controlling every person he encounters without giving anybody the opportunity to react so he can create his own "Harem" dream, including his relatives like his Sister and Mom. No empathy is given to anybody without any feelings of remorse or thoughtfulness to the people who are mind-controlled. For those fans of TF that like to explore the psychological and social aspects of TF, this makes the scenario null in worth since it does not do any work to explore any of these aspects and goes straight into some sort of wish-fulfillment fantasy that end ups being boring for most people since everything ends up being "perfect" for the protagonist, and asks more suspension of disbelief that any story is allowed to ask for.

The protagonist does not suffer any consequences (in almost all of the routes), nobody can't react to his new powers for too long, since everybody ends up being mind-controlled, the protagonist is happy, the people are happy, but underneath we have a psychopathic-like character that has no limits and a cast disposed of their own identity and opinions, giving the scene a very dark and "macabre" feeling.

The sexual scenes are mostly lackluster as well since they consist mostly of the time in repetitive blowjobs with not too much describing of the situation. Even then, the scenario has gained a certain cult following due to its ironic appeal, the scenario is so erratic that can it even be considered funny for some, it is absurd and surreal in an unintentional way, comedic in the same way The Room is; there are also people who are able to ignore all of these issues if they do not take the scenario seriously either, going straight to the point merely to jack off.

The Heaven We Were Promised by PhaseJumps (Lotus)

 

Fan cover made by Clavietika

Those who normally enjoy MTF TG due to wish-fulfillment reasons will find in this scenario a nice experience that talks about the most delicate and ladylike aspects of a female transformation.

The premise of this scenario follows John becoming one of his classmates and getting stuck for physical reasons that will not allow him to say use the transformation spell back. John will end up looking for help for one of his friends, Setsuna, and spend a girly moment in the night while they both try to discuss an option to turn this back to normal.

The scenario counts also with a protagonist that goes deep in introspection of all his actions, and even when for some this will be considered off-character it adds a lot of personality to the story since these introspective thoughts deal with the meaning of TF and TG in general for people who like it for its psychological reasons.

As a bonus, the spellbook is described as a science fiction artifact rather than a magical plot device, explaining its mechanisms and functioning as if it was a device with very advanced technology rather than just a fantasy item, people who like science fiction more might enjoy more this take on the book and it shows how fantasy and science fiction are differentiated in the amount of explaining the author wants to give the audience about their own world.

Even when the scenario has a lot of good points, it ends very soon leaving the audience merely in the prologue of the story and leaving a lot of questions to answer. One of the most critical faults of the scenario is how according to the author John is written as an egg in the scenario, his feelings towards femininity in itself are not explored until the spell has been used; this along with the tags Slow Mental TF of the scenario, might make the audience believe that John is going towards mental changes and identity death caused by the spell he has used.

The scenario has been abandoned, but or has enough little moments to be recommend alone if you like MTF stories, wholesome TF stories, and wish fulfilment.