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.

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.

Golden Lining by GarySavage

 

Fan cover made by Clavietika

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Shortcut by ddendejoder

 

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

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

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

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