Just a quick, short stream of consciousness scenario that Harem fans might enjoy thanks to its ironic appeal. It has cryptic writing, illogical decisions from the characters, and an accidental dream-like atmosphere.
Basically, John gets access to an app (or something, I didn't understand well to be honest) that lets him possess people, he possesses Katrina first and then Allison, he then he tells her the truth and she tells him that for compensating they have to start dating each other, from now on Allison will let John possess her at times if she is in the mood and with an app option John can give partial control to Allison while she is possessing her.
Katrina and Jess were living with John for some reason I don't remember and once Allison moved with John Katrina was starting to get jealous, but nothing is developed from there, the scenario ends up in a placeholder, maybe for the best.
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.
Probably the most recommendable Power Trip scenario. Now, what is Power Trip? When playing and reviewing scenarios, you usually find certain patterns or certain criteria that repeats in some releases, so naturally, for me, the idea of giving that pattern a tag becomes a necessity so these scenarios that share certain characteristic can be grouped together and recommended together. (Classification is just such a beautiful thing <3).
The term "Power Trip" was coined by Student Transfer Developer Narg when we were discussing a way to classify this kind of scenario in TF fiction, and is a term a lot of people agreed with. What does Power Trip mean? A scenario in which the protagonist abuses power with impunity without negative repercussions, often so the reader can vicariously experience being powerful. In Power Trip scenarios, the ethics beyond the limit of the protagonist's powers are often ignored, letting the player experience the story without mental repercussions or remorse.
In this way, we can group scenarios like Harem, The Tale of the Loser, Body Switchers, and even new ones like John Sudden Lifechange. Now, the idea behind the Power Trip tag is having the protagonist being the one who has the power to change things, if another character has the power to change everything and the protagonist is part of the victims, that would fall into the label of masochism. Even then some people could argue that the obscure Takeover route of Student Transfer has a character that could be a way to achieve power for the writer even when the events are told from John's perspective. I accept that the tag is still a bit wonky and the concept is a work in progress, but by now I propose it to you to group certain scenarios that follow this format.
While Power Trip might be infamous among people who like TF due to the psychological implications and the possibilities of creating conflict around the struggle of an identity change, it is true that Power Trip has its own appeal, normally between people who like TF for lewd reasons more than for any psychological or dramatic reasons. I would define it as some sort of dark, freeform Wish Fulfillment that doesn't take care of real-world ethics.
Going back to A New Life, the scenario offers a new take of Claus, the most respected person in school due to his grades and his intelligence. Once a new student arrives, Michelle, Claus loses his spot as the number one student and looks for a ghost trying to make a wish so he can get revenge. The spirit, Faith, tricks him and steals his body, making Claus a ghost unattached to the shrine that needs to have a body to exist. If he stays without a body for too long, he will end up disappearing.
The scenario at the moment goes through a big amount of decisions and flairs but offers overall two main routes (with a big new Sandra route coming soon) and it has something that makes it stand over a lot of other scenarios, detailed animations all over the story to enhance the experience. For the most part, there is all sorts of boob bouncing, boob bouncing with dresses, with sports shirts, boob bouncing with all kinds of poses, if you love lewd content you will certainly enjoy all these animations that really make you submerge more into the story.
The main route starts when Claus possess Allison and due to her assets, decides to stay as her for the time being, Irene discovers the truth and after some time Claus discovers how to mind control her as well as Allison, making them both praise him and obey him as their master, Claus also concedes Cornelia her wish of being her friend Sayaka instead in exchange of having Irene take her place in her body so they all can live in her mansion. What the story points out now is that Claus is presenting his new self to school and is planning how to get to the top again and avenge Michelle, but Buggs writes the story as he imagines it so things are pretty much unpredictable, really.
The characters are very one-note, Allison is treated as some sort of dumb airhead that only knows about her boobs, Claus is very much a Mary-Sue with incredibly high levels of intelligence and no regards for the feelings of others, and Irene is treated as the tough girl of the group, but I have to admit she is the one that feels most natural of the tree so far.
Overall, what else you can ask for? It's an over-the-top, bizarre story where you as a protagonist have no limits, there is also (some sort of) plot, which makes it different from previous Power Trip scenarios where things just keep happening without reason. The descriptions about Allison's body and breasts are very detailed and that added to the superb animations Buggs has carefully crafted all over make this route a favorite for me and a solid recommendation for any Lewd scenario fans.
The other route focuses on a male-to-male possession where Claus enters the body of Stevie and some days after confronts Mel who is picking up on Stevie. Things happen, and Mel and Claus start to get closer to each other more and more while he is in Stevie's body. While it is interesting to see Mel feel intrigued and confused by this new Stevie as if she develops her feelings for him, I found it ironic that the whole route is based on fixing the relationship of these two while Mel is just talking with somebody that has possessed Stevie, not the real him. Claus overall acts the same as he does in the whole scenario, trying to show his superiority and being apathetic to her advances even when externally giving up to them until they have sex. If Claus stays in Stevie's body, he is probably going to get somebody to reach for, but Claus overall I felt he was the same until the placeholder, with little to no character growth, he wins them all, and he always has the reason.
This route is overall a mixed bag, it is one of the few or probably the only one with Male to Male possession in the Student Transfer scenario catalog, and thanks to Stevie's huge penis, it is probably a good option for guys who want some variety and want to feel who it is to be a more "gifted" person :P. But the thing is that Stevie overall looks too young and that might be a deal-breaker for some (the initial release had to be deleted since Stevie was described as underage). Buggs says that he can't really write about a boy who isn't girly enough since if he isn't then it isn't really different enough to Claus and therefore not interesting to write, which is a fair point as a writer, but still something I would mention to people who want to check the route out, Stevie is basically a girly boy with a really huge penis, which plays in the irony of his appearance.
Even when I do not usually enjoy lewd scenarios, I found the Allison route quite enjoyable and recommendable, all things considered, and I am waiting for an update soon.
"What if?" ideas about what would happen if someone else would have gotten the book or remote have been around since the beginning of the community, being the main premise of several scenarios already. This time, is the turn for one of John's friends, Katrina, to take the lead.
In this scenario, Katrina is planted as a girl insecure about her lack of feminine attributes, like a small butt, strong legs, and a taste for videogames and fantasy. While some people might consider that changing's Kat tomboyish nature is just a cover she has to hide her insecurities too different from her canon character, I believe the story works to give her enough conflict to deal with on the scenario.
Once a transfer student, Allison, arrives, Katrina gets jealous of her womanly attributes and nature and after a while, she tries to convince her to body swap with her.
The other hooks this scenario has a placeholder for are a possible Leona swap, a route with her little sister Jess, and a route where Scarlett, who is portrayed as a sexist coffee addict and a douche bag to her sister, takes over the remote due to Kat's own fault.
Why does Katrina go to get the remote with Kiyoshi? In this timeline, she didn't have a D&D to go to that day and is John uses the excuse to leave, Kyoko leaves just as in the main game, making Kiyoshi tell Katrina to come with her and leaving before she can react.
Again, the scenario, as a lot of others, is abandoned just as the story starts. Overall there isn't any story to enjoy but I am sure some people will like this alternative depiction of Katrina, still a bit sassy, and irreverent, and even pretty impulsive and irresponsible, but with an insecure, girly heart on the inside. Play time, around 15 minutes.
With a playtime of around 15 minutes, The Tale of the Loser offers a story similar in style to Harem where the player can swap and possess different people with no consequences in a sort of fetishistic wish-fulfillment without limits.
The small routes that this scenario shows have:
1. Dominic becoming a famous actress, Gwen, after copying her body from a show on the TV screen. Gwen coincidentally arrives at his house at that same time and sees Dominic morphed as her.
2. Dominic stealing Connie's life and make her continue his life as Dominic in his old body
3. Dominic swapping with Flavia, Allison, and Cassie, each one in different routes.
Overall, most characters act like normal human beings unlike in the dream world Harem shows, Dominic swaps with all kinds of people without taking care of their feelings, just like Kiyoshi, but he shows a little remorse for his actions that are completely taken care of by his own desires.
An interesting thing to note about this scenario is that it seems to point about Abbyswap route or a route related to Abby, some characters talk about an incident in school, making everybody taking the day off, apparently, Abby and John got in some sort of trouble that is never explicitly mentioned.
The narrator also talks directly to Dominic in several parts of the scenario, including the beginning where he apologizes to him for giving him such a bad story because he lost 900 lines of coding while working on the story, recommending also to other scenario authors to make backups.
The scenario is overall pretty short and already discontinued, aside from the Abby and John plotline, it is mostly focused on the sexual appeal of these stories for the reader, if you can get off in less than 15 minutes, well, check it out, I guess.
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.
