Phantom Detective Kat by Blortle

 

Phantom Detective Kat is another proof of concept scenario, one of those that might or might not show interesting ideas but end up too soon before executing any of them, and ending up abandoned for the frustration of the players.

The setup was quite up cool here actually, basically, Katrina has the power to use astral projection and possess other people and even have sex with her own body thanks to the fact that her own body can create a puppet when she leaves. After some time she uses her power for good and solves cases around the school.

The story starts when one day her own body gets stolen by an unknown person who challenges her to find out their identity before 48 hours pass and Katrina gets stuck as a ghost or in the body of someone else.

So, cool concept, but according to Blortle, the culprit was going to be Maria herself with some silly reasoning or something like that, he said so it wasn't going to be anything serious, so don't raise your hopes at all. The scenario can be played only in 3.0 but so far it doesn't have anything else to offer. If you want to find out more and expand the idea yourself, you are free to try it out.

Writing Scenarios in RenPy by JcJace45 and Cobaltcore

 

Oh boy, our time to check the v3 era has just begun! 

I have checked and all scenarios in the list from here on were released after v3, which means that v2 is all covered! Aren't you excited? A new standard of quality in writing, after all the mistakes that writers committed with v2 stuff, v3 scenarios will be shown a new level of collaborations and fan content made for the game.... right? 

After Kmalloc, the original founder of the game left, JcJace45 took over as the leader of the project and cobaltcore started working in the technical aspects of the game, including the new v3 engine.

As said before, v2 scenarios were presented as a single rpy file thing, without the possibility of adding custom assets, which made some people try and add their own putting them inside the own game folder, which was according to cobalt a terrible idea. The idea of shipping certain scenarios within the game came out because it would feel weird to have the scenario mode at first totally empty, and since then it has become a tradition. If your scenario stands enough (and is not that heavy either) it might end up bundled in the next version of Student Transfer.

John starts saying that this time he will actually teach you how to actually make scenarios, which is a remark to the Scenario Example made by kmalloc and that lasted only 10 seconds long, it gives a simple explanation about expressions and animations, and after v3, it includes an introduction to the json data files and scenario folders and also refers the writers to check the official Scenario Guide that by that time it moved to its own website, which is an extension of the official Ren Py documentation explaining how to write on the engine, writing fiction in a visual novel format became easier than ever.

Writing Scenarios in RenPy is an incredible reading experience where the emotions of the reader are leveled up to their peak, it has everything, compelling characters, an amazing story, teaching for the audience, self-awareness, 4th wall breaks, a cameo from one of the characters of the other installment of the massive-TF-VNs-from-TFGS franchise, Press Switch to put everything in a single cinematic universe and even it ends up in an epic explosion a la Michael Bay.

Here is a little fun fact! 

This scenario will always be referred to the user every time John says "Of course!" in anything you write or read if scenario hooks are enabled.

The K-Files by bricks

 

So far scenarios have tried to show us what would happen if Kiyoshi got the remote (Kiyoshi's Gaiden) and what if Katrina would have gotten the remote (Greener Grasses), it was fair that Kyoko's turn to have the baton now.

Once Kyoko gets the remote and shows it to her friends, Kiyoshi recommends using it to solve mysteries and the scenario turns into a Scooby-Doo episode. Basically, Michelle asks about a weird thing that happened to her in the storeroom of the school, so Kiyoshi and Kyoko go and start to find out, Katrina and Claus later join in the fun.

Overall I thought the story was okay, I was thinking they would use the memory copy function to solve a mystery but in the end, the remote isn't used this way, there isn't too much comedy and the scenario gives a bigger Slice-of-Life vibe. Kiyoshi gets gender-bent, some small, some cute mind control follows, and the case ends up solved in a wacky and nonsensical way (it seems you can't mind control ghosts but you can exorcise them wiping away their memories) and after some funny but fake advancements for future episodes, the scenario ends.

The scenario is overall complete, with around 40 minutes of gameplay. While the story isn't really TF-focused, it might be disappointing for some, I find it non-essential in the very end but I can say that you can still give it a shot if you want some cute, inoffensive fun. It's not great, but it's good.

Reality Twist by Kromar

 

Back to the usual quality standard of v2 scenarios. Basically, John, who is less empathetic and now resembles Calvin more, decides to test the remote and mind control of one of his teachers, he later possesses her and takes her body for a ride.

In the morning he realizes he has memories of her own life and his body has disappeared, thinking he might have used the reality alteration button of the remote by mistake, John tries to decide if he should live now as her or try to go back and get his life back in some way.

I thought the reality change function was cool, but the scenario lasts only 10 minutes and doesn't go anywhere after that, and since John is depicted as a minor, it has been removed only due to depicting minors in sexual situations. You aren't really missing anything though, the only thing I think was worth checking is the reality change rules, which I will post a screenshot of below.

Carried Away by tossaway

 

Fan cover made by Clavietika

Due to her lack of understanding of social clues and obsessive nature, Carrie becomes a good candidate for a Power Trip scenario, being a female counterpart for Kiyoshi in that matter; but aside from letting her go batshit insane, Carrie also carries (heh) the potential for a lot of character growth, and that is what this scenario focuses on.

After deciding to take a shortcut unlike in the main game John goes to the park and finds Carrie waiting for him, and John, therefore the player, will have to choose a way to deal with her.

The options are quite organic and logical, you can either erase her memories of the encountering and send her home, erase her memories, send her home and remove her obsession, or you can either try to make up a story or even then tell her the truth about the remote.

If you decide to mind control her you can finish the whole issue (and therefore the scenario) quickly, cut or burn the knot, without any consequences, which felt quite nice, being able to let the player choose the right choice, and let the story end even before it begins even if the player wants to, it makes you feel as you can actually choose what make to happen.

If you decide to tell her the truth, John will also end up sharing his memories about her, making her realize her own creepiness, after a breakdown, Carrie invites John to her home after school, and John has to discuss with his friends what should he do about the situation, unfortunately, the scenario ends in a placeholder there.

The longest route and probably the one people will pay more attention to is the one where you try to make up a story, which ends up in an accidental body swap. After this, Carried ends up taking over and with some commands, she puts John in the verge of identity death, even then when not quite, John has no memories but he knows who he really is, which makes up for quite a chunk of interesting internal dialogue where John is trying to keep his identity intact and not to let himself go to the programming.

It is interesting seeing him pull and push with his own brain as he has to act as Carrie and discovers more about her life and background and the reason she is that way, all this is pretty short and happens in the span of a single day, but it is pretty great too see.

At the end of the day in this route, John might or might not decide to try with Carrie again and convince her to turn back, and if the right answers to her questioning are given, it can result in John finally fixing up his relationship with her or even stay back in a limbo of uncertainness.

Overall the scenario has no more than 30 minutes of gameplay and most of its paths end in a placeholder but I still think it is worth checking out if you are interested in Carrie and give yourself some ideas about how to make her grow as a person, this is the starting seed to make her a great, fully-fledged character.

Cold as Ice by Hizack

 

Fan cover made by Clavietika

So far I have covered some scenarios focused on lewd content and some focused in more elaborated stores focusing on the mental and social aspects of TF in the wholesome side, but there is a side I haven't covered of this branch of mental and social side focused stories: the one focused in darker stories, in bleak drama and pain.

Just as with many other scenarios, Cold as Ice's routes vary in quality and consistency, therefore it is better to judge them individually, like seasons on a TV show. Cold as Ice features three long routes that are linear for the most part aside from the decision each one has to give out two different endings for the audience, if you do not like linear stories you might still get successfully bamboozled by the illusion of interactivity in the story. For me, linear stories are preference sinve most of the time an author that focuses in one linear story it usually ends up fleshed out well; what about the endings? Well, that is something I will talk about in a few minutes...

The scenario introduces Irene as the main character while depicting her as a somewhat tough girl with anger issues, but with a big heart for her best friend Allison and good people who meet her, she ends up getting the spellbook but since she isn't from the Blackwell family, the amount of spells she can do is limited and it also a lot more hurtful for her, taking away her energy at times.

The first route that was completed, and curiously the route most people play at first, is a route focused on Brad, the Brad route, for short. 

This one starts when Irene discovers Brad and Eric, who have been genderbent for an unknown person. Eric leaves and Brad ends up teaming up with Irene who offers her help to find out how to turn him back despite her lack of powers. To help Brad cope with being a girl she gives him some of her memories about being a girl, which also causes Brad to slowly become more and more female-minded, so Irene and Brad have to find a way to swap him back as soon as possible.

Overall the scenario behaves mostly like the main game, focused on the social relationships of the characters and how do they deal with the TF, there are also certain parts of comedy and the whole route has a taint of mystery that keeps you engaged, around the end it even gets to be thriller-esque and even when the route is linear until that point, it is nice to see Irene getting more and more clues. Another good thing to mention is how reduced the spell library Irene can use is, that is, to avoid escalation issues, which is something that normally is not taken into account in the main game.

Is the route good overall? Well... no, the truth is that the reveal is the most random and nonsensical thing ever, somebody who didn't take any participation in the story, or in any of the other routes for that matter, creating a big plot hole in the whole scenario as well. It is a person that you would never expect because she has no actual motivations related to the characters or what they do, it just doesn't make sense.

This villain is literally like the one shown in the ProZD's sketch.

Now, I said that I would talk about the two ending formula later, right? In the Brad route, you get an extremely bad ending and an extremely good ending. The curious thing is that you end up preferring the bad ending by far because it is a lot more interesting than the good ending.

Hizack mentioned he did the good ending by obligation, and it shows, the good ending is insipid, cliche, and lacks inspiration. The bad ending on the other hand might feel a bit too cruel for some but it has an interesting concept reminiscent of Being John Malkovich movie.

So, the route has good stuff on it, but it is simply ruined by its laughable ending. Hizack said he didn't really want to bother changing it, and just as the experimental ending in Stone to the Head, it remains as a failed piece in the Student Transfer history.

But don't worry, it gets better from here.

In the second route, Irene's sidekick is not Brad but Cornelia. The plot starts with Irene and Allison switching bodies out of curiosity and after an incident with Sayaka, Cornelia ends up stealing the book giving it to her thinking Irene and Allison are planning to prank her with it (not sure how though, she opened, and only see a bunch of gibberish) and then, the worst case happens, Sayaka gets magic powers, a lot bigger compared to the ones Irene has.

Here we just do not see a bigger background about Irene and Allison's friendship but we also get to see more development with Irene towards her classmate Cornelia, who now has been forgotten by Sayaka due to her new powers.

While the route lacks the mystery of the first, it still keeps you engaged as you read how Irene and Cornelia try to turn things back to normal and take the book away from Sayaka before it's too late, it's also a more cheerful route than the previous one, at least while not including the ending.

The issue with this route is the characters, starting with the main antagonist, Sayaka, who, as seen in other scenarios, acts like a complete psychopath without any actual empathy, she is the best she is and nobody can defeat her, to the point she becomes practically cartoony and one-note. A lot of the people in this route are treated as if they lacked enough intelligence. She offers to duplicate money to everybody and people start to form a line asking her for wishes, but even then Sayaka's mind controls half of the people that come to her (according to Irene), like her classmate Zoey. Yui and John also seem to lack intelligence and feelings and they believe whatever Irene tells them, not even getting angry about what is happening in the process.

Now, since Sayaka is a psychopath, the depiction of Cornelia also changes, she is not a loyal friend that has been with her since the beginning like in Arch Nemesis and she isn't an obsessive, insecure friend as shown in the main game, in the Magic Sayaka route, she is a total victim and a tool used for Sayaka just as anybody, a person who is desperate of having a friendship and that needs help as well. So, choose your version, for better or worse, there are several interpretations of the story that can explain her character. Personally, I like to see her cutting ties with Sayaka altogether, but Sayaka as a character doesn't even work here, she is practically just a walking plot device, doing things of her will, and no actual good qualities are given to her so we can feel her more alive.

Aside from that, I do think the route is quite solid, and also in contrast to the Brad route, it features a complete improvement in the concept for both endings, and I think it is really important to mention tit since it might be useful to anybody who wants to write fiction. 

While in the first route we had an extremely bad ending with interesting concepts an extremely good ending that turned out to be pretty insipid, this time we got two, interesting, bittersweet endings in which where the protagonist still loses and wins something in exchange. There is no really a correct ending, or an ending where pain can be avoided, in both cases, something bad will happen, Irene will lose something, and in both cases, only some stuff can be solved. Some people would argue that having two "bad endings" is actually pointless, but there is a difference between them: who will you choose to save? Irene, or her friends and other people instead?

This format is important because making the protagonist lose something no matter the ending makes the endings feel more real and less idealistic, the issues they went through feeling more real because the errors the character committed will still have consequences the rest of her life, there is no Deus Ex Machina, no magic solution for everybody, the pain we felt along the way is real and will stay there in some way or another for the characters, it makes the story actually mean something in comparison to the cheap happy cliche ending of the Brad route where quotes are seemed to be taken of a random generator and do not actually feel like they mean anything, this is something, and it's great. 

It is true that Irene's decisions are a bit stretched out for the sake of this format and she could have found another option to fix everything again, but well, it is something that can be forgiven, this is the first time the two bittersweet ending format was made in the scenario, and both endings are certainly interesting even if one lacks a lot more logic than the other.

The decision to if I will make completely happy endings from now on too is up to me to choose by now, but with Cold as Ice, I have learned that stories can have a bigger bearing in the story is not everything is solved around the end, not all the issues leave, and the bittersweet feeling, if used well, is a good resource to make the story feel more realistic, the character has lost something due to their own actions and there are consequences to those actions. While it is not done simply for the sake of it, it can be great, since I still feel that fictional characters can be treated with kindness too.

I don't want to spoil too much about these two endings either, and I already said that John and Yui's depiction is pretty flawed in this route, but in one of the endings I just saw them in a certain state that caused me a lot of feelings and emotion. The execution there was wonky since well they both acted pretty casual about everything, but the concept made me feel so excited that I even jumped from my chair several times. How can I say it without giving spoilers? Maybe something like ID pseudo-selfcest romance, or something like that, and done well could make up for the best romance story ever, and I hope to write a story for the concept one day.

For the very last route, we have Yui. After Irene uses a spell that she can't reverse due to her lack of magic abilities (even when the spell had it' own warning) she and Yui get body swapped and get stuck. Their only hope? To find a true Blackwell heir that can use the book and switch them back.

This route also features some curious ideas like the fact that Yui and Irene are slowly getting their identity erased and slowly getting into believing they are each other even when they have completely swapped bodies, implying that their own brains contain their own sense of self and that swapping souls only allowed them to take their previous memories temporarily. 

While I do not get quite the logic behind that mechanic, since to me body swaps could be seen as a complete memory swap, this is a field that allows a lot of interpretations and points of view. Do souls exist? Does a puppet with your memories have its own soul? As far as the main game goes, I think the consensus is that there is a soul which puppets don't have, according to Yui Spellbook Continuation, a puppet who stays in a body long enough can grow to be a real soul, the "memory restoration effect" is another take in the mechanics of body swaps which its own rules, which in this case are made to give a sense of urgency to the story.

New characters are introduced, like Sam, Yui's playful and sassy cousin, a character that hasn't been shown in the canon game up to this date but she gives a new dynamic to the Yamashita family.

I could mention and make more nitpick about the story, but overall it is what it is, the story is about to find Blackwell, so Irene and her friends make people in all school touch the book waiting to see if the gem inside it shines, so they can identify the real Blackwell, Irene starts to get closer to Natsumi since Yui doesn't usually give her enough attention, and the story develops into Identity Death around the end. This route features other two bittersweet endings where there is not a solution for everybody, will you sacrifice Irene? Or would you rather sacrifice someone else? Who is going to lose their sense of self?

Now, let's talk about Identity Death (or ID for short), what is identity death? Basically, it is the term used for when a character forgets about themselves and who they really are, starting to believe they are someone else and become a different person at the cause of this, in other words, it is the death of an ego.

For a lot of people, this concept is failed on its own and represents a deal-breaker, the point usually given is that is nothing more than a flawed tool to change the perspective of the story and giving urgency, which many fail to write in the first place. If a character forgets everything about themselves and what we went through with them before, doesn't that make the story pointless? Anything they could have learned along the way is simply forgotten, what they were, everything, it is murder for some, and not different than normal death for a lot, what is the point of writing stories where we will just end up with a different character at the end?

Well, my friends, I used to believe all this too, all this, indeed, but Cold as Ice has shown me the actual potential of the whole concept. The point of Identity Death is not how the affected people deal with the death of their own ego since they are basically... dying, the point of Identity Death is to see how the people related to them deal with the "death" of the person they knew before, will they accept this new person or will they try to bring them back? Do they really consider this a new person? It makes up for a good source of Drama and an interesting option to show how some people grasp the concept of identity: Does the body represent the person? Is being with friends with the new person the same as being with friends with the person you knew before? Does any of their qualities stay before this ego rebirth?

Yeah, it is a complete mindfuck on its own, and even when Identity Death stories will usually end up with a sad or tragic tone, a lot of the stories it can tell to deconstruct even more the sense of self can be really interesting. Consider that Identity Death is not a mental fetish, but more of a social fetish, since the point is not exactly how the own character deals with their own death but how others around them do.

The big issue with this route is... that is not completely animated! After a bit, the path ends up in a placeholder, but the whole route is there, you have to manually open the rpy file and read the script from there, there are no animations so no visual clues (like Irene and Yui's eye color changing is given), but it is perfectly readable this way, even when a bit of a chore.

When I did read it I made some screenies with what I imagined what was happening in the story, here is Riley (best boy in the whole scenario):

What we can wait for is that somebody ends up animating the rest of the story, now that Hizack is gone from the community.

Overall, while it has a lot of flaws and issues, I consider Cold as Ice a fantastic scenario, recommendable to people who love introspection and drama in TF. People who are looking for wholesomeness and more happy stuff might need to look somewhere else but those who look for bleaker endings and stories might enjoy this scenario. If you think Identity Death is all bogus and nonsense, I would say also that Cold as Ice is the scenario for you to try so you can get an idea about what is the whole appeal of this TF subgenre. I have to admit, overall, it has a lot of fantastic ideas and some great characters too.

Into the Janeverse by Clavietika the Gynaecoid

 

When I entered the Student Transfer Discord I did read comments about how easy can be to make a scenario due to the low technological barrier, and with all my might, I decided to give it a go, starting to work on it.

Now, this scenario is composed of two finished routes, each one with a different feel, there were more routes planned but right now I am focusing on another scenario and this one probably will not be continued, at last not any time soon.

Yes, this name is also super stupid, I was planning on doing an anthology of different Jane background stories to show in each different route a way to develop Jane differently, each one ending up in a different Jane, henceforth the title Janeverse, but eh, I think it is just too silly and actually misleading, I actually had a massive twinning route, but there is just so much more interesting ideas in my to do list that I doubt I will ever end up doing that one, time is limited.

The first one I did was the Kiyoshi route, not in the scenario itself but it was also the first public story I have done ever, and it shows. My objective was simple, I wanted to make Kiyoshi likable. The truth is that I have always identified with Kiyoshi due to his nature, he is quirky, he misses obvious social clues, and he is seen as a joke by everybody else; my experience in school was pretty similar to his, I wanted to take the challenge, and show that Kiyoshi could really have humanity and not be just a joke character like he has been treated until this date.

Now, what do I think of it now? Is it recommendable? Did achieve its purpose?

Personally, I hate it, I really really hate it. It is just a subpar, average at best romance story that doesn't stand up with any other story in TF fiction, it is just one of them, nothing new, nothing impressive, just me trying to follow the book and do it right. While I think I showed traces of what it can be done to make Kiyoshi grow as a character and show that he can be a good couple if you are into quirky and nerdy guys (which I am), the story has very low stakes and its tone is too cheesy to the point it makes me want to puke, Jane is also pretty one-note being just "girly" and  "sentimental", something I dislike now. I also shoehorned some lines about mental illnesses like Kiyoshi having depression to explain his inability to take things seriously, instead of just attributing it to him being immature. I feel I went way too far from what Kiyoshi really is, I projected too much into him and I ruined it. Overall, this route makes me feel ashamed.

If you still want to see a slice-of-life and romance story with Jane as the protagonist and see a more human rendition of Kiyoshi, you are free to check it out, taking into account the wholesome tone and all the cheese you will have to bear.

The second route had a different result, it's based on a Yui clone, Yuuni. This character comes from Applemelon's scenario, the story got abandoned but in a draft Gary sent me I did read how Applemelon basically launched the clone into space killing her in the process because Jane (in a Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde fashion) didn't know how to unsummon her and wanted to get rid of her, that caused me a huge pity for her and awoke a lot of feelings in me that literally forced me to make this story, I just couldn't think in anything else, I had to write her story.

Basically, I was kinda obsessed with the idea (or well, I still am) of being the mother to someone like you, basically, of someone having an unconditional respect for you, of being able to do anything to anybody but intead choose them to treat them kindly; basically, I'm obsessed in the idea of kind, gentle omnipotence over a single someone.

But it is not just the Jane part of the story I like, it's the Yuuni part too, the Yui clone: We have somebody who has been made from nothing and doesn't have anywhere to go due to her origins, somebody who is not just a copy but a true being who lives and exists just like any other person and knows somebody that could erase her any moment, but doesn't. It's this sensation of pure and unconditional kindness of a merciful god that makes me feel safe too, and Yuuni after all this tremendous fear she is received with kindness and is accepted by Jane, total and complete acceptation set up to its extreme logical conclusion: a witch mother that is always with you. 

There is also the fact that Yuuni and Jane are also the same age so in the eyes of everybody they are seen as equal and even if Jane is more powerful than Yuuni, Yuuni is able to live by herself and doesn't really need to hear any advice or learn about life from Jane. I have always been afraid of taking responsibility for someone because I can't trust in my own decisions, so by extension Jane doesn't raise Yuuni or anything. Yuuni will still obey Jane if Jane wants to, but Jane gives that permission to Yuuna to be more than herself, to be more mature than her, or well, something like that, I don't know, I'm not a fucking psychologist and this is not even the main conflict the route has, yes, I'm sorry to admit but all this is just a bunch of emotional masturbation, yes, it makes me angry, but that's how things are!

In the end, after I showed all these cute scenes of Jane being powerful and Yuuni weak I ran out of conflict, I panicked and I sat one night to brainstorm. In the end, I found that Yuuni could get a new crisis doubting about her own free will due to her own nature as a clone, and it worked naturally well, it was also fun to twesk the relationship between Yuuni and Jane as much as I could, taking it up to its limits, overall while is a bit boring route I find this concept to be solid. I like it.

The route has a lot of issues, yes, first a lot of scenes were pretty repetitive, as Gary said: "Characters barely show any emotions, especially Jane, Yui and Yuuni, their speeches are very monotonous, they are always calm, they always say the right words and I don't see anything interesting in their characters. They are literally the same." In the end, I ended up making Yui the villain, making her regret creating Yuuni and threaten her with exorcising her, increasing her anger and creating a bigger outburst between Yuuni and Jane. The pacing isn't as great considering there is only one arc and is still cheesy, but since Natalie already reviewed it and she liked it, this route is done for me, I don't want to change anything else and mess up what I did right, I'm happy with how it is now, and I'm also thinking in bringing the concept back in future stories, but with better execution and set up.

Several people like it, which makes me happy, there are some strong emotions I was able to show and people connected with, so, if you like super wholesome cheesy stories, I can recommend this one with all things considered, it is not great, but I think it's at least good for that kind of niche audience I am aiming for, it has some ideas I still think are interesting and worth exploring. It is a cute route and some parts of it still give me the stomach butterflies.

What do I think the scenario overall? Eh, it's eh; at best, it's just a mixed bag, it is my first effort after all and I still got at a lot of help for it while making it, if you have already checked other wholesome GB scenarios and you are still hungry for them, like really hungry and desperate to the point that you would check anything no matter how low, you can still check this one if you can forgive all its flaws, although I would still recommend checking better ones first if you haven't already.

Additional Info:

-Kiyoshi Route

I took the project out in an impulse, I obviously had never done anything like writing before and I wanted to finish it as soon as possible fearing that my energy to do it would run out pretty quickly, that I would abandon the project because I usually lack the will to do anything due to my depression, I wanted to get me name in the community.

What did I do then? I took an already done, abandoned scenario: Yui Spellbook Continuation, made by his majesty Applemelon, and I started editing it to my taste so I could create my own story as fast as I could, running against the clock and my own abulia.

Since I didn't have the energy to read any instructions either I just took the code, watched the tutorial videos of, again, his majesty Applemelon, and I started editing the code little by little, in the first scenes I changed just some dialogues, then I changed some backgrounds and I played with animations, as I edited his already done scenario I learned more and more, I also made a lot of obvious questions in the Discord because I haven't read the guide and I wanted to finish fast, around the end I learned to make new scenes, use positions, and the basic things for finish a scenario.

The writing of this first route of mine took a lot of rewrites and editing, thankfully, two people came to me saying they wanted to contribute to the project and I happily accepted the. My first idea for the ending was to end up the story in the sex scene with Jane with Kiyoshi inspired by one of the endings of X-Change Alternative. I said it would be best if I could give something of fetishistic appeal to the audience after the whole drama thing, I was afraid people would hate it. Fortunately, Erin and Gary told me that ending up te route in a sexual note was bad, and they said I should end up with a more serious ending instead, which gave me hope t make more drama stories. I also proposed an ending where Jane and Kiyoshi would end up being taken away by a spaceship to end up being abducted by a spaceship to imply that all the content of the route wasn't serious at all, just a joke, again, because I was afraid, that ending also got rejected by my peers.

I asked a lot Erin, Gary, and Ayathegame about how I should end the story because I wasn't confident in my ideas, I was scared and I just wanted to make things right, after I ended up changing Applemelon's scenario and I added the ideas I had ready I found out I didn't know what I was going to write next, I had no idea in how to end the story, so the rest of the plot was made by making up questions to these three people and even more "Do you think this would work?" "No?" "Do you think this would?" "Can you recommend me anything?" "Maybe if I do this instead would be better?" I feel bad for them because of my lack to think by myself, but I was able to finish thanks to them. 

A lot of the early versions of the scenario have very cringeworthy ideas I was trying to fit in, like having Kiyoshi breakdown saying he was aware of how stupid he was and how he wanted to make things right, which was changed to Kiyoshi's breaking down because he made Jane angry which Gary and Aya said worked better. In another version, Kiyoshi saves Jane from Carrie and she forgives him for visiting him in the hospital, but I erased it because I found it cheap and it almost made me puke later. 

The dissociation was also an issue, because st some point Jane described John as s totally different person and IK12345 mentioned that this could be seen as if Jane was born by the spell instead and that she had killed John, a different being than her. Personally I wanted to keep it ambiguous so people could think I was focusing in an fetish ID story if they wanted, again, because I was scared, but at the end so followed her advise and I took a lot of the extreme dissociation of the story, although some people still find it confusing, which was a failure in my part. A failure caused by my own indecision and fear in what to write.

In one of the versions, I made John get abducted by aliens and make him female-minded to avoid any issues about having a non-cis John because I was scared with the complaints about changing the main character of the game. Luckysquid and Kawaiiswitcher said that adding aliens and then go to magic damaged the pacing of the scenario, so in the end, I removed all that and went for a simple non-cis John, it was not my favorite option, but it was something they were right about, my pacing was already irregular enough.

The first sex scene draft had descriptions about reaching extasis and uniting with the cosmos because since it was going to be the final scene, I wanted it to be dramatic, Erin said it was very cringing pointing out Kiyoshi would not become a total porno star in his first time (fair point, what was I thinking?) and thankfully helped me change it, I ended up copying some lines of the Murder route sex scene and I tried to add some of the mine making sure and triple checking with Erin that they weren't cringe (Does this work? Does this sound natural? Would this describe this well?), Erin also gave a couple of sentences which I added for the final product. Lesson learned. I will never do a sex scene, ever again, not until I can experience it myself.

After working practically all day every day I was able to finish the route in 20 days, I published it, and overall it got average reviews.

-Yuuni Route

I think I don't have too much to say about the process creation of this process, this time it took me around a month and after a lot of questions and game testing thanks to a friend of mine in discord, Keyboard, and proofreading by Kawaiswitcher, I was able to finish an acceptable version.

There were also some cringe ideas from my parts, like calling Yuuni "Yuitwo" at first, I changed it after Hizack and Ayathegame recommended me this other name, hoping nobody would remember the old name again. I even had some technical issues like when trying to loop a track in one of the dramatic parts of the route, I wasn't able to make it crossfade well, so I exported a big chunk of it at a pretty low bitrate and pasted it there, the song is a minimal piano piece with repetitive notes that lasts like 30 minutes and I left 10 minutes of it, which the first 4 have a very slow fade in to make the music grow up more and more. Ridiculous, I know, I just hope nobody has noticed yet, I hope not to do such a thing ever again. The whole code and assets are a mess, it makes me feel dirty looking at them.

Yui's Intervention by Alternate

 

A Pre-Monitor scenario showing what would happen if John had tried to use the remote with Yui on the third day of the canon. In this scenario, John either tries to get the remote back from her by force to end up swapping with her, or John showing the remote to Yui like in Monitor but this time with Kiyoshi.

If you try to snatch the remote from Yui the scenario goes into body swap either both trying to find a way to swap back and hoping the remote is not totally broken or either wait to figure something out, even then, it ends just as it starts.

If you explain to Yui about the remote, she will swap John's sex for a moment telling him that since he prefers to be a guy, he should experience how to be a girl for a moment all before Kiyoshi tells her that she should experience changing sex as well if she is going to do so with John, Yui enters in reason and the player is given the option to invite Yui to go with John's friends.

The feeling of the scenario is relatively similar to the main game, a bit slice-of-life-ish and not too dark, it could have been an enjoyable scenario and maybe it was going to play similarly as in Monitor with John getting along more with Yui. The scenario gives the player a lot of options to try with but all of them end with Path Under Construction. Path Under Construction, Path Under Construction, Path Under Construction...

There are just so many scenarios that want to start something and create a setup for a story but simply just end as they start, path under construction, I just feel like a soul lost in a limbo of unfinished stores and I don't know what to do anymore.

My sister's friend by SupD

             

Standard 10 minute scenario for v2, several routes are opened but none of them are developed in the slightest, it is just the overall setup of what the author wanted to make.

In one route John wishes Circe to be his girlfriend and Circe to match him more to her preferences he makes him a clone of herself (apparently Circe is into selfcest maybe?), in the other route John wishes to be closer to Holly so Circe morphs him into a twin sister someone else related to Holly, you should choose between Katrina's family, Leona's, Yui's, Riley's, Abby's or a random person's, but aside Yui and Holly, all of them ended up in an instant placeholder.

The Yui route would introduce a new blue-haired girl that hasn't appeared in canon yet so I forgot her name, probably as an original character in the scenario.

In the Katrina route, you become Scarlet's twin and you can choose to sleep with someone from the family for the night. It's because of this route that the scenario has been removed since it depicted underage characters in lewd situations. Overall, you do not lot lose anything, really, I left the only idea I found actually interesting as the preview: people generating memories with you based on how you treat them on your first day as a twinned person, nothing else.

By what I could see this scenario felt like it was going to be a big project focused on twinning, but by the results of it I have to say we have to keep looking for something else.

In Praise of Being by Clavietika the Gynaecoid

 

There are so many things I would like to say about my scenario but well I don't want to sound self-centered, even then, I said I would like to review as many scenarios as possible, people have been rechecking the old v2 scenarios posted here and some new ones have gotten certain spotlight, so I thought it was fair to me to give me certain space to post about In Praise of Being as well so it can be included to the database with the proper tags, it is just another scenario along with the others at the very end.

And yes, the title is kinda stupid, after I went through so many titles I picked up a seemingly decent reference to an album, I just pick names that reference music due to some sort of reason I can't explain, I know that most people won't get the reference and has nothing to do with the scenario itself, but I like references, what can I say? First I went through Gynephilliany which was some sort of satirical title but even if it sounded cool in my head it was a very bad choice in retrospective, Apple said that picking a title that couldn't be pronounced like Gynephilliany could bring a lot of meme potential and I agreed, memes rule the world, so I picked another album reference name saying Metamorphogenesis, long, silly, and unique (kind of), people complained and I tried to settle for a normal name instead, the original album title is "In Praise of Learning", an album by Henry Cow, I changed Learning to "Being" becuase it sounded fitting, "In Praise of Being" means "How great is being yourself" or "Thank you for being yourself", you know, I'm not sure really because the title comes from a reference. I, to be honest, don't know why I have this mania of referencing random stuff and now I just feel it sounds silly every time somebody says it, but eh, people will laugh at me if I change it one more time so let's just call it a day.

I decided to make In Praise of Being because of a huge, insatiable need I have been experiencing the last few years with TG fiction, something that has been eating me inside for so long, and it is the fact that in MtF stories the characters always reject their transformation! And it bothers me so much, so much! To be granted the thing I want the most and not accept it! In every single story, it has been like that! It is just corroding my soul, and I can't stand it any longer.

Now, when I proposed the idea of having a character that accepts her transition right away people have told me that there it would make no sense since if the character accepts their transformation instantly it would be the same as having a female character from the start, there would be no character growth or psychological battle, which I consider not true, some trans people themselves have told me this and that has surprised me and worried me.

Now, if I am talking about immediate self-acceptance I am talking about accepting that the morph, the sex change, is a good thing while allowing the character to explore all the psychological issues that come even when the morph is presented to you magically: the impostor syndrome, the guilt, trauma, association with the previous identity that you believed it was you and the dissociation with your own face which is something that nobody has ever talked about that much while talking about a sex change.

True, with body swap dissociation is present, people do not see the bodies they are in as themselves since they belong to someone else. People say that they start recognizing themselves with the hormones, but in my case, I still do not see it and not because I do not like it but because I have spent all my life dissociated of a face and the concept is just really alien to me, I just feel like a blob of the brain and it bothers me how people do not seem to notice that. People say that dissociation with an MTF story is going to work a lot less than in a body swap story since that body that changed is still yours, other people find it weird that Andrea even while wanting to be a girl she doesn't accept herself as one, at the moment. That the protagonist considers the girl in the mirror a different person sounds like a huge stretch on paper but it does happen in real life and makes a lot of sense for people like me, think about it, from my perspective the idea of associate yourself with a face is really artificial. Depicting dissociation properly so people can understand me is my biggest challenge with this project and the one I am afraid can fail more than any other.

As I have said, changing your identity is a very slow, sticky, and ugly process, even if you want to change, it is going to take a while, accepting a change is not going to erase all the trauma you had and those preconceived perceptions that you have of yourself, it is not going to be an immediate happy ending and it is going to take so time.

Some people suggest adding transgender characters in the ST universe but without allowing them to transition with magic or a remote, which I find a bit cruel, or actually, really cruel! In a universe where other people can change sexes a lot more easily, that should not really happen. Some might say that they want to show the whole experience of being trans and not just create a happy wish-fulfillment thing without the dark aspects of it. I disagree with saying that Student Transfer and TF, in general, are based on the concept of sudden identity and body changes, and a story with a sudden body change in the perspective of a trans character, we are experiencing mental changes all through our lives but TF fiction is focused on depicting those things faster.

Anyhow, I had the introspection thing ready, but people told me that seeing Andrea talk to herself all the time could become pretty boring, I had some romance planned at first but simple hesitation based on introspection is lame, I kinda panicked thinking that people would not find enough conflict in the story so I added three more conflicts aside from the whole introspection theme, which is now going to develop along with these arcs; I do not want to say which they are now because I do not want to spoil it yet, but well you can see now that one is... well, trying to make your friends believe you are actually you? Well, I accept it, that is just anagnorisis fan service for me, I am just fascinated by the idea of identity reveals and change so much to the point I can't explain, it produces me a sense of euphoria: still, consider the whole identity reveal an interesting thing to show in a story and trying to imagine how people in the real world would actually take such a change caused magic is interesting to experience, at the moment I have three characters assimilating Andrea is Andrew at three different speeds, Genny, Miranda, and Benjamin, fast, medium and slow, in this way I can experience their assimilation in various ways and keep the whole acceptance of such an incredible thing like a magic change present in most of the story.

The main reason why IPOB is a comedy is that with my first scenario I realized I simply can't bear a story of drama alone, as I added more and more conflict, things became too dire, and looking back I simply can't play that scenario again, read it, or work on it, it has just too many sad parts and since I feel already sad most of the time I look for stuff that makes me laugh, I just want to laugh, really, please make me laugh. I have never done Comedy before and even then this is my second public project ever so I am not really confident on my jokes, I feel that they are either too predictable or sometimes I feel they could get too weird like with the brain room gag, but well, I am always getting feedback from Gary and others and as long they can ease up the tension and present the whole stuff in a more cheerful way I think they are good enough, I also can't think of myself really that seriously so the comedy is essential from either side you look at it. I am always doing my best to make things funny, but I know that it will take me some time to get actually consistent and even more until I can actually develop my own distinctive sense of humor in writing.

I think adding comedy and making Andrea is such a quirky character made the scenario way too niche, even more when the scenario is already too niche since it is immediate self-acceptance and is something that doesn't happen often in GB. IPOB is going to end up with a really small demographic to satisfy, but well, what can I say? I have been accepting that fact slowly. While writing you might find yourself in thinking about how much you should give up on your own preferences to satisfy other people rather than just you, it is all about balance. I suppose this time I focused a bit more on what I liked rather than thinking in what other people would like because there are just too many MTF stories without immediate self-acceptance and I want to have at least one example that satisfies me completely, I want to do my version, this story is for me and ultimately to make ME happy, so that's why finding comments about people who like my story makes me so excited, that lets me know that I am not so alone. 

Now, people say that the whole dissociation and mental conflicts are too strong for a comedy, but I believe that a comedy can be done this way, I really believe so. One of my tricks is most of the times make jokes that do not necessarily have to do with the story itself, unrelated stuff that could be presented in a normal way but it's written in a more absurd way instead; the comedy centered in the story is focused on Andrea's social awkwardness, as well as her dad's, something I think I can do safely since social awkwardness comedy has been done before and is understandable and relatable, right now I am just afraid of overdoing it.

Unlike with the first scenario I did where I just wrote the story as it came out to my mind I decided to plan all the story from the beginning here, and so I did, what I need is to figure out the order of everything and keep good pacing because honestly even when I have all plot points planned I still haven't connected the dots, I try, but I feel I don't want to spoil the story for myself more than that, I just get nervous, anxious, I try to organize the sequences for when I am going to start to write for an update and I say then I'm going to take care of the rest later.

Now, in summary, what I am trying to offer here with this scenario is like a pact between wish fulfillment and psychological growth and conflict stories and scenarios in general, the character is not going to simply accept the change or being mind-controlled or being forced to the change, it is going to be a good change from the start. 

I would call this my trojan horse for TF fiction, I know how most of the audience of TF looks either lewds or a psychological conflict, and overall I had accepted that most of the times I just wanted wish fulfillment, so this is my wish-fulfillment story about that perfection MTF transformation filled with a bunch of mind conflicts and doubt to give to the people that like the conflict, for each one their own. I have a lot to say about my own experience anyway so I can add as much mental conflict as I want, Gary said he didn't care if it was a wish-fulfillment story anyway since the conflict is interesting, people in the thread have pointed out a lot of the things I wanted to mention, so I find myself happy by now with the results in my purpose of satisfying the main TF demographic. I won't really recommend it per se, since it some sort of "experiment", but if you play it I would really like to know your reactions, I really want to know what you think. I can't make up the idea of what you might think about what Andrea is going through to the point it becomes to me a shameful necessity to ask what you really think, I just get so weirded out by own myself and I want to know how right I am to feel that way.

I can't really recommend it to any lewd TF fans since it is not what I have planned for this story, I wrote like one single sex scene for the first scenario I did and it was still pretty fucking hard, it turned out to pretty cringe as Erin (one of the people that used to help me) said so in the first drafts, Erin gave me a few lines and added some comedic ones too, it lasts like 2 minutes, and trust me I can't give you more than that, not while I haven't done it. :p

I think I ended up adding too many ideas for me to handle but that was mostly because I was afraid of not having enough conflict, still, I'm happy with what I have been learning not just about writing but also about myself while making this scenario, so even if it takes me effort to write it is my ambition to continue it because as I said before, I feel relatively happy with the results. While I have a big task now to continue with this scenario I really want to see it finished, and even if it will take me the time I want to continue with it no matter how much it costs me, I hope that my strength lasts me long enough, that my attention span doesn't fail me, and that the story doesn't fall apart in the next updates.

Kwumpus Hunt by MechMage

 

Fan cover made by Clavietika

Absurd, surreal, and goofy. Based on a text adventure game from the 70s, Kwumpus Hunt offers a fantastic comedy wrapped up in puzzle-like gameplay that any Student Transfer fan should check at least once if they want to try out something different and refreshing.

The plot centers around Mel and her quest for the Kwumpus, an evil entity that has taken over the school changing everything and everybody to his liking. With the help of her friend and guide Flavia, Mel will have to find out what is happening and strike in the right moment to free the school of its perdition.

The gameplay is nonlinear and even randomized. Now, before you flip up about randomizer use, I have to say that this is randomizer use done right. There are several characters that appear in different rooms every time, the location of the villain is also randomized so you will never know where to actually attack. The rooms without characters offer to the player the possibility to watch pieces of the past to collect clues about the evil Kwumpus to make sense out of the situation.

The rooms with characters will not let you get any clues from that room, so, to get all clues, you will need to replay the scenario several times; even then, the scenario lets you get the right ending with a single playthrough. Replaying the game is very enjoyable anyway thanks to the 7 different endings you can get in total (9 countings some small variations according to Mech, but I didn't see them anywhere, to be honest).

Each room gives you a limited selection of other rooms to go to, if you find end up walking to a room with the wrong character, you will get a bad ending; you have to learn how to go through the right combination of rooms to navigate through the school without being found by the villain or one of the mind-controlled people before time. 

One thing I found a bit annoying is that the rooms do not follow a certain pattern, naturally. Being in the stairway doesn't give you the option to go to the roof, and being on the gate doesn't necessarily let you go to the courtyard, you have to go through several rooms until you find one that lets you access the room you are looking for. While some people might find this a small inconvenience that could increase gameplay without adding any actual content, I found it to be just a small nitpick in the otherwise interesting random mechanics of the game. Because yes, that's right, this is not just a visual novel, this is an actual puzzle game where you have to press the right buttons at the right time.

A lot of the TF events like gender-bending, possession, and twinning are used either just in small amounts or are relegated for comedic gags, so overall I would classify this as a Mind Control focused scenario since it is after all the main threat destroying the school.

While I would not recommend it to people who want a thought through serious TF narrative or to lewd and sex-oriented TF fans, I think Kwumpus Hunt is a great choice for anybody who is looking for come comedy-oriented TF content. It is not just very interactive but also very funny and one of its kind.