Witches & Warlocks by dukejones

 

Just like Potions, Witches & Warlocks shows potential to take the Student Transfer universe to another gaming format but due to its abandoned state and incomplete ideas, it remains skippable and unessential to the very end. It's true, projects like this can become pretty big and even ambitious, but they end up being left off due to the amount of energy they need to be spent to make the complete pieces. Maybe with a bigger public instead of just a niche community, the creators would decide to continue instead more often.

It starts as a retelling of the canon game, with a few different characters and reorganized roles, afterwards, it shows the player a map they can go through in an RPG or life simulation kind of style, in which the player can get stuck with repetitive day sequences (an issue Potions also has) or ending up in a placeholder.

There are some interesting ideas as well some arbitrary ones that do not seem to serve any purpose since there are no routes to go through, just a few things John can do but, due to the slice of life simulator style it uses, do not seem to get anywhere or develop any kind of plot whatsoever.

The interesting ideas are the spells, that, even when not TF focused, would give a lot of options to work within a magic-related game.

A few of the other ideas are changing John's mom, Sandra, for an original character, Miranda, who acts just like Sandra, maybe the author wanted to use this sprite's CGs but so far nothing is done with the change.

Carrie is changed for Patty, a stalker that this time helps John with her own knowledge of magic as a witch, and that helps him introduce him with some spells.

Jane, instead of being John's GB self, is presented as his tsundere sister who hates him even more than Holly and shows a conflict between the siblings caused by the departure of their own father.

The writing does the job and it does not come as a stream of consciousness-like some scenarios in the past have, the new characters have a defined personality, but most canon characters just repeat their main game lines or repeat the lines of others, making this a guessing game to see what has changed and what hasn't for the most part.

Another thing to say is that this scenario is very low in its TF dose, it has some mind control but afterward nothing else really happens, John astral projects, but it does not go further than that. I can say that some people can check it out if they want to see a slightly different setup of the game with a few different characters and roles as a proof of concept with a different type of gameplay, it has a nice slice of life feeling to it, but should not expect anything at all if they are looking for a complete or fleshed out story.

Playing time: Around 1 hour or so, if you do not get stuck in the loop.