Electric Disaster by Thalcynnas

 

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.

Absorb by drago625

 

Okay, when we will learn people? When will we learn? This scenario is 61 lines of code long, that's like 2 or 3 minutes of content at best.

This scenario was promoted as a test only, but as you can see, it was abandoned, and even so included in the scenario list for the frustration of all ST players, it's not even a successful test! It does have one error in-game and it is not even exported correctly! You have to add a ZIP extension to the blank file you get and create a story folder for the template rpy file, because it doesn't even have a structure.

God knows I have been patient, I have tried to be as fair and unbiased as possible with all scenarios, all of them, but even I have limits on my patience, and the more scenarios I find stuff like this WHERE THE AUTHOR DIDN'T EVEN BOTHER IN CONTINUING AFTER WRITING FOR 10 FUCKING MINUTES I get, really, really pissed off. One empty scenario? That was passable, two? that is bad, but this many? I just can't keep going with this project, because you know most people don't even give a single FUCK about this! I don't even care if your scenario is bad, just give me something! Some effort! Even Harem is better than this, it can appeal to some people, it is at least something! Something!

What does happen in the story? Well, the author says John's parents died and he has been struggling to keep up working and going to school, he even saved a girl once because he doesn't feel like living anymore, and then the author tells us to have fun with the story. Yikes.

One scene happens and after John accidentally absorbs a girl in the park he goes home and morphs into her. Yes, he doesn't think about how he totally murdered someone in the street despite being presented of being of good of heart, and the scenario just ends there in a bittersweet placeholder.

While I find the concept of absorption pretty interesting (absorption vore is one of my favorite fetishes) this scenario just doesn't have anything going for it, don't even bother.

My New Family by R0nnyA

Basically, just another Power Trip scenario in the vein of Harem, just with a lot less content. John is unhappy with his current family, Sandra didn't wake him up for school in time and Holly is distant, so when he gets the remote he changes his family to his own desire.

Depending on the choices he will make Holly his little servant sister and his mom, Sandra, either his girlfriend, sister, or close friend. People who appreciate morality on the side of the protagonist should probably skip this one, otherwise, you can check it out if you are into Mind Control and Incest, it will be either hot or plain creepy. Even then, is also pretty short, with only around 10 minutes of content.

This is the issue with most scenarios, all of them are not just incomplete, but also abandoned at their own very beginning, they create a setup and they just end, and I have tried to be as positive as possible about these stories in the past, I say, well, it is not a good story, but they offer good ideas, I try my best to think about someone who might fit the demographic the scenario is aiming for, but the truth is that checking stuff like this at the very end will be frustrating for a lot of readers, any kind of readers, even if you are the person who likes this kind of stories, you are just going to get teased and then left completely with your pants down! 

If you are going to write a scenario in the future, I would say work in giving either a complete story or at least... one hour of content? At least in that way, you will make sure that there will something for the people who decide to check your story. What are you saying? Publish something as short as this as a proof of concept? No, don't, we have enough of those already, and people end up abandoning those "proof of concepts" most of the time anyway! I am sure we can discuss the concept you want and the story with you in the forum or the Discord.

Now, there is just another little thing I can mention about this scenario, let's talk about the how-the-protagonist-gets-the-TF-device-trope!

So far in the community, we have seen:

A car dropped it by accident and I picked it up (Press Switch, Bodysuit 23)

Aliens gave it to me (Student Transfer Remote)

I found it in an old abandoned old place (Student Transfer Magic Book from Kat's house, PDA device from a library or so, I think)

There is also other stuff like magical events in Freaky Friday and stores that when you try to come back do not exist anymore. In this case, we have a variant, John gets the remote thanks to an old guy who offered him "a universal remote that does whatever he needed" but I feel that's the worst variation of the trope, why somebody would give a remote like that to a stranger? Just because they are the protagonist? Anyhow, for fetish and sexual-focused stories, it does the trick, but for more serious stories, I think is something you might want to take into account if you are going to write them.

Cross the Line by simmitar004

 

Cross the Line reads like a project of a teenager who wanted to make his own story inside the game, all characters had their names changed to very specific ones, the story is on the line of stream of consciousness and overall the writing is almost on par with Harem, just without any of the lewd parts.

The story presents Claus, now named Derek, and his three friends, Eric and John (all have different names here but I forgot them), who find one day an unconscious girl by a trash can, after Claus checks her fever (somehow, we don't know), the girl wakes up and tells them that they are the ones who can fight against "it" and all of them faint right in the spot.

After being taken care of by the paramedics to the school's nursery (for some reason) each one of the guys discovers that all have gotten new "super powers", John can use astral projection and possess people, Eric can shapeshift and Claus can body swap, and the player is given to follow each one of them in three different routes.

Most events are rather silly and almost oniric, Michelle gets mad when she sees Claus in the garden, saying all guys are the same and that they like stalk girls, Claus accidentally uses his powers, and Michelle, now in Claus' body decides to take "revenge" against guys with her new "powerful body".

The plot seems was going to take an adventure and mystery-focused direction with the three guys trying to investigate a ghost in an old building after John had spotted them in one of his astral trips, and the scenario pretty much ends there.

Harem fans might like this but at a difference from that scenario in all its bizarreness, this one is pretty short and doesn't have too many memorable lines so it doesn't offer too much ironic appeal, either way, it is just a failed piece writing that ends too soon. Inoffensive, quick, bad, nothing else. You can skip it without any remorse.

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.

Memswap v5 by Gunzil the Lucky Squid

 

From the arsenal of the whole Student Transfer catalog, it comes to this little gem called Memswap. An intense ride of Personality Change that doesn't let you breathe at any moment! 

Everything starts when Sandra tells John about her workday and how she would like to have a break from all her duties. What do you think John does? Mind control her boss and other people at school so she can get vacations? No, because that doesn't get us that route, what John does is... swap with his own mom!

To help act like each other and fill it, as well "live the whole experience" John and Sandra start to... copy each other's memories? No, because that would not give us this awesome route, they... start to swap each other's memories completely! This is what starts this ride of madness all over it in a downward spiral that doesn't seem to end!

Memswap is just restless, it starts with such a simple idea, taking some memories to fill up for someone else, and then it just goes on and on and on! Everything goes well in Memswap, there is no apparent conflict in this route, John and Sandra swap their memories and you just wonder every time when is something going to go wrong, but then nothing goes wrong and the tension just increases throughout the whole story because you always think that something is going to go wrong in one moment! Something!

But the fact that it has no conflict is also another point in its favor, it does not focus on the suffering of the characters like other routes or in Drama, everything is fun, but just apparent fun when you are still seeing the madness develop underneath it! The more and more John swaps memories with his mom the more the roles get reversed, every time their relationship shifts more! John gains more control as his own mother and Sandra becomes more and more obedient to her new son-mother! Sandra loses authority as a parent and the more memories she gets from John the more she starts to act like the boy she was raising. 

Every single shift in perspective is shown, John doesn't like how Sandra makes him look, but after a memory shift, is John who likes it and tells her to keep it! The change in opinions and ideas and how they make them act! The characters do not seem to notice it and when they try to act like their former selves you can see they already have mannerisms and vocabulary of each other already within them, even having their old bodies their former proprioception seems to stay!

Memswap is technical and detailed, if John is trying to recall an old memory from his perspective, he ends up realizing the shift in perspective happening if an event involves her Mom, thanks to the remote, each other's brains act like computers and swap saves memories like files in a computer, thinking and see the insane implications is intense!

Having a mother that remembers playing video games all her life as a son, remembering having your own birth, becoming mother and son all in one in a point in the swaps, or creating two brand new people! Becoming more maternal, getting comfortable in a new body! Get the authority of the person who raised you or becomes the person you are raising, be young again, or discover a friendship of several decades in a single second, a friendship lasting longer than your own life. 

Memswap tricks you in its slice-of-life context but in reality, it is the wildest of stories so far in TF! Not even lewd focused, but still, one of the horniest routes that have ever been written! It is tense, it is horny, it is technical, it is intense, be prepared because Memswap will leave you out of breath! This is why Memswap is the best Student Transfer route so far.

I'm really hyped to see its end in v6 where we will see the conclusion and consequences to all these insane swaps, and I will also be waiting patiently for Yui Memswap which seems is going to top Memswap! I totally recommend this route to anybody into Mental Changes and Personality Shifts, as well Memory Transfer and Role Reversal.

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.

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.

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.

Bigger Better Stronger! by Clavietika the Gynaecoid

Cover made by me

This is the worst scenario ever made! It blatantly copies the structure of another, better scenario, Graceful Misfortune, where the characters go through a wacky situation and then at the end, the whole school goes insane. The author couldn't even make dialogues for the Breast Expansion bits, so they are stolen from A New Life, really, this is truly pathetic.

There are poor attempts to make jokes and some of them are even ripped of South Park and an OVA from the series Happiness. Who would have thought this was a good idea, making a scenario of a concept as minuscule and idiotic like Breast Expansion? Half of the scenario is spent talking to the fucking genie while we hear why Yui ends up wishing for bigger boobs instead of something else. After that the scenario has rushed the fuck out until the end, making everything happen too fast, the ending is way too cheesy and even saccharine to the point it doesn't make sense.

The only good thing is the breast expansion animation but even then why spending the time growing the boobs of a character that we already had seen with big boobs? Seriously this is a fucking waste of your time, get away from it.

Stone to the Head by GarySavage

 

Fan cover made by me

Stone to the Head offers a retelling of the now non-canon Murder route with an original character to change the dynamic John has with the main villain of the route, Jack.

While a lot of people consider that this scenario wasn't successful in delivering what was aiming for, the individual ideas it has are worth mention and even worth playing if you are interested in the topic itself, I will mention some thoughts about my own interpretation of the story just as well.

Now, at the beginning of the scenario, Erica is introduced as a seemingly violent girl that John meets, he shows her the remote and she asks her to let her stay in his body for a while so she can go out with John's friends that going to the Karaoke soon since she doesn't have any friends and wants to go through the experience, John accepts and after the experience turns successful, they use a command including intuitive memory recollection to help act like each other, and they both go to the other person's home.

At this point of the story, the player is given the option to play an "experimental" route which has become infamous overall. While being in Erica's home, John is filled with weird thoughts since he's in Erica's brain and he has memories that are affecting him, Gary explains that due to the memory copy, they both suffer from Mind Contamination. If he doesn't find some pills Erica uses to calm himself down, his personality changes, and experiences a psychotic break. The next morning he kills Erica in his old body and mind controls Katrina so she tells the police she was the murderer.

While the idea in itself isn't necessarily bad for fans of Mind Contamination and Personality Change, the whole route feels incredibly rushed, getting reduced to not just a route in itself but just a bad ending, John's personality is totally changed by the next morning into some sort of calculating and calmed down psychopath, the reason he killed his old body isn't quite clear either. The quote the scenario is closed with "The one that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead." doesn't explain too much its reasoning and makes the scenario feel superficial and edgy.

If John is able to find the pill, a longer route starts, later Erica mentions seeing a photo of her uncle Jack with John's sister, Holly. Since John is still asking himself why his sister doesn't talk to him, they both team up and try to investigate what happened between the two of them, going one night to the school and check the school files about the teacher and unveil the truth.

The scenario is unfinished and according to Gary, abandoned. What is left of the route offers a mix of suspense that hasn't been seen a lot in other ST scenarios, while John and Erica are investigating the truth, John sees her hit Michelle violently in the head so they can recover the remote and he's warned by several people about Erica's nature, who is rumored to have murdered one of her classmates, Patrick, in her previous school, so John has to try and do the right choice about if she is dangerous or not before it is too late.

What the scenario has to offer in the state is in, is an enjoyable mix of creepy atmosphere and a story with decent enough mystery showing the dark side of what the remote can cause, even with good intentions. The overall theme would be "Using the remote in the mentally ill, brings misfortune".

Some people claim it shows a harmful depiction of mentally ill people since Erica is implied to be a dangerous psychopath in the experimental ending, it's a fair criticism, although personally, I feel the remote was the catalyst for all the events that follow, not just Erica. Since the ending is pretty vague, it goes for the interpretation of the reader. According to Gary, the purpose of the route was to raise the stakes and increase the tension, but the result could have been handled a lot better.

Another point worth mention is that Jack is also given a more human side, he is a good uncle for Erica and he, according to her, is always there to help, even when being despicable towards John and his family. A lot of the time villains are done in one note, without giving them any redeemable qualities on their own so the audience can hate them more easily, but the truth is that we are humans, and humans are not composed of black and white personalities, and there will always be ambiguity. Giving good traits to bad characters like Jack and giving bad traits to characters like Erica make the characters feel alive, not like perfect people but like actual human beings with defects but also qualities.

The other part worth mentioning of this scenario is the one that didn't make it into the final release, the part of the story Gary planned but abandoned afterward, and is mainly that Erica wasn't really Patrick's murderer, her friend, Becky, had a crush on him and tried to get him to join their group. At first, Erica was just annoyed by him but then she started to be left out with Becky spending way more time with Patrick than before. Patrick was always cheerful but since he had severe depression, Erica felt that he's not sincere and that annoyed her even more, when Patrick killed himself, Erica was tagged as the main suspect.

What I do think is that Erica had the task of teaching the player to not judge everybody by appearances and make people understand that even the mentally ill shouldn't be completely left out. According to Gary, Erica is violent and has schizotypal tendencies, but at the very end, she has empathy. One of the bad endings even happens when John decides to wipe her memory out after getting scared. John confronts Jack afterward, and since he has a remote just as well, he uses it and makes John kill himself. 

Even then, since Gary abandoned the scenario, nothing of this appears at the end. The tension added to make the character doubt her at first played out against her, and this also adds up to the rushed-out experimental ending that ends up being too vague and that could have been handled a lot better, leaving people with a lot less favorable impressions of Erica. She has gained the status of psycho, while the intention was to show the total opposite. Not that I can really blame them though, the scenario is unfinished, and the death of the author exists.

Powers by royal422

 

After discovering his new ghost powers, John ends up getting discovered by his Mom who can see ghosts due to experience with John's Dad, John ends up possessing her and at school, he starts a possessing spree starting with Rita and Rachel, the scenario ends after 5 minutes.

This scenario is just another proposal of Serial TF (Serial Possession in this case) that ends before it even starts, John acts impulsively like Kiyoshi, without caring too much about what his Mom says, and using his powers led by his horny thoughts. If you like this kind of content, the scenario doesn't offer really anything aside the set up, so you can easily skip it.

Twisted Lives by ZeBeste

 

Fan cover made by me

Perhaps one of the most curious scenarios for v2. While most early scenarios had fast, unfinished dialogues trying to get into the account as fast as possible, Twisted Lives has exaggeratedly elaborate prose that edges with parody and comedy.

Apparently, Zebeste, the writer of the scenario, hadn't written any sort of fictional story in well over a decade, and that ended up in verbiage that doesn't necessarily add up to the story and even slow down the pace by a whole lot. All characters have the same voice and cadence, and all of them deep down into introspection, explaining every single feeling they do have onscreen.

Now, while this makes the scenario sound bad, I found it actually pretty enjoyable and even superb, the way things unfold and the way the sequences are ordered makes up for great mystery and intrigue since the reader has to puzzle together the order things happen to make sense out of the story, and aside from the cadence issue, the verbiage adds up to the surreal atmosphere the scenario has, even when everybody has the same voice the scenario has no more than 4 characters in total, and just seeing all these characters talk so deeply is refreshing for old v2 scenarios.

Now, what is the story about? I don't really want to say too much about it this time since I think you should check it and experience it yourself, trust me, it is quite curious. What I will say is that apparently John and Katrina have certain subconscious wishes deep inside them and the way these wishes are granted is... bizarre, to say the least, more spoilers on the tags of the scenario.

The scenario is around 20 minutes long-only and it is currently abandoned, I asked Zebeste, he didn't have too much planned aside from what it is shown here, but even then for what it has now, it's worth checking out.

Potions by IchigoxTatsuki4life

 

Potions is an incomplete RPG-style scenario where the player can visit several places and buy stuff to make a potion that can turn John back to normal.

The premise of the scenario goes like this, John finds a book of potions that promises him to make him more attractive, he half-asses the potions and drops it on itself by mistake, starting a chain reaction that might make him completely unnoticeable to women, losing his hair and even converting him in a woman with no brain capacity if he doesn't work fast enough.

While mixing certain potions John accidentally ends up morphing into a gender-bent version of himself, a girl with huge breasts (Allison) or a more mature woman (Connie), but for some reason, he can turn back to his original form to continue working in the potions to stop the morphing process in his DNA.

All the scenario is handled through menus that can lead to certain actions, like working to get some food, or going to shopping and buy a new swimsuit as Allison, if John looks as Allison, he won't be able to work lifting boxes and he won't get any food, but the days continue normally without issues.

After a while the scenario gets repetitive, the actions go through an endless cycle every day, and the worst part is that the scenario has virtually no animations, making John use the same face, in the same position, 90% of the gameplay, John goes to university, goes to classes or the library, goes downtown, and then he goes back and tries a new potion or goes to sleep. Until now I have been able to find two endings, one where he morphs once again (to Sayaka) and starts to touch himself uncontrollably due to an overwhelming sense of lust and finally starting to cry accepting he has lost his manliness. The other ending ends up with John morphing into Natsumi and finding himself in her room, being told to go to sleep.

RPG fans might enjoy it a bit more than me and find more stuff on it, the scenario code has around 20 flares and 5 endings (even one where John gives birth, but still without any animations) but overall, and due to its to gameplay seems rather unfinished.

Maidenswap v5 by Choripankiller

 

Featured as the main route for v5, Maidenswap exploded in popularity everywhere and became one of the fans favorites in most cases, offering some missing background for Holly, John's sister, as well expanding the characters of Cassie and Elizabeth, Holly's friends.

While I think this scenario is a fantastic option for people who look for wish fulfillment and cheesy stories, it fails to add the depth it wants to achieve for people who are into TF interested in the psychological aspects of it, the relationships are artificial, and overall, it falls just as a beautiful lie.

Now, this review will contain spoilers past this segment since it will discuss things related to the plot, if you like to wish fulfillment and do not look for TF for the depth, I still recommend it, when I did read it I felt a lot of emotions because I enjoy the content of that kind as well in a certain measure.

The first thing that comes to mind is that there is no character development from the characters in almost all situations, while Holly accepts her identity and opens out to people, this happens too fast and the acceptance from her part works surprisingly easy. She even accepts the fact that John and Cassie might had been dating a year ago when she was rejected with a drink, there are no consequences for them, even when Holly was initially the focus o the route.

Elizabeth, one of the main characters, stays the same through the entire plot, probably because the devs wanted to give her more protagonism in Maidswap, but even then, she ends up things that might seem out of character for her, like erasing her friend's memories at the end, a decision she takes without consulting her. 

Aside from the ending Maid(en) from Scratch, where John and Cassie decide to start their relationship all over learning that they should get to know each other in a more normal way, the two main characters do not see any character growth through all the route, Cassie does not learn about her or about other people, and either end up breaking up with John for lack of trust or decides to forgive him. The worst one would be John, who ends up even doing some terrible things like mind controlling Elizabeth and hiding the remote from Cassie in one of the ends without consequences, again, not bad for wish fulfillment, but bad for a story of another kind, John does not feel remorse for his actions and lives with Cassie's stolen life.

One might argue that he grows in some of the bad endings like Where the Was Fire, Ashes Remain, but that's just because he is forced to learn when Cassie and Elizabeth destroy the remote and kick him out of the house.

Another big issue that this route suffers is how casual the characters are about the situations they go through, sure, Cassie cries, there is drama, frustration, and eventual acceptation, but a lot of stuff seems to be skipped over or relegated to happen offscreen. Once the long swap starts, John doesn't even try to contact his regular friends, telling Cassie to live his life for him, John does the same, and just after some years, they decide to live more "as themselves", even then, they don't seem to care about their old relationships anymore, everything in their previous lives got shifted aside. 

When John swaps back to his original body in one of the endings, he casually goes out with his friends and tells them the truth, who doubt at first and still talk to him normally, why? Because apparently replacing John with Cassie doesn't make really a difference. Even John says once "Well, there is no class at university today, what should I do?" Implying that he doesn't care about the career Cassie had chosen for him or that Cassie chose something John would study and had been studying as if she was him instead.

Another issue is that most characters have the same way of speech, or rather, their personalities are rather similar in most of the cases. With the main four friends, you can differentiate the personalities of each character: John, casually standard, Katrina is playful, she teases, Kiyoshi is forceful and annoying, and Kyoko is shy and reserved, she is the nerd girl of the group. With Maidenswap we have three Johns that are all casually standard to something, they do not have a recognizable voice between themselves, and that makes the characters not feel alive, all of them have very few defects, (aside from John in some endings, and controlled by the player), Cassie never does anything against John, and solves the misunderstanding with Holly in a single day and in the most assertive way, Cassie says she has done bitchy things, but the player never gets to see any of that, overall, it feels like the whole dynamic of their relationships was very artificial, a perfect story about perfect people.

One last thing I would mention is how I disagreed with the ending when John said that he and Cassie were not as compatible as they thought, I said, yes! You have hit the nail on the head! Their dynamic is flawed, and overall it really feels that they got close together only as a coping mechanism, I thought it was a perfect conclusion, it was difficult to accept, but it was something, they would teach them about how a swap can affect their thoughts, it would have made the trauma really mean something because they were living something they didn't really feel, they would have learned, they would have grown. Unfortunately, Chori decided to go for a more idealistic ending, saying that they both had lived great moments together, in the endings Cassie defends John, what does she say? He is gentle, loyal, a good man, just what any other girl would say of a generic anime protagonist, that he is basically "a good person". I found the couple to be quite dysfunctional and I didn't really get to dig completely their happy ending.

This is an issue that a lot of people will find themselves with, sometimes the conflict of a story will be ultimate, romance, but the issue is that John has other romance routes already in the game, he has Monitor, where he gets to know more Yui, a classmate, that makes a bit more sense, it is the usual school first love, he has Connie, that actually shows how a relationship-centered by the remote can end in tragedy, he has Katswap, and more, and it seems that a lot of the routes could end up in that, John should not hook up with all the girls in the game, and he clearly shouldn't have ended up with a person as Cassie, which has no real reason to be with John, she is a college student, a rich person that wants to be a fashion designer, John is a middle-class high school student passionate about videogames. If you wanted me to believe their relationship was genuine you should have used something stronger.

Overall, I do not think Maidenswap is bad and it has actually a lot to offer to ST and TF fans, but, failing its original purpose, it works mostly just as a wish-fulfillment story, relegated of logic at the very end.

John Junior, El regreso (Spanish) by mrdonferri

 

This scenario is awful.

No, it's not just awful, it's incredibly putrid and bad.

No, it's not just putrid and bad, it's an insult to everybody who tries to read it.

Did you think Harem was bad? Think again. Basically, John gets a remote for his birthday from his Dad, shenanigans happen, shit happens, and overall, the writing is at the level of Harem but the difference is almost every single plot ends up containing either implicit AND explicit parts with underage characters. If you are the ones that like non-sensical and wacky TF like Harem, trust me, there is a lot of stuff that is infinitely better than this, thank God it has been removed so it doesn't see the light of the day, ever again.

Oh, and the characters were always changing size for no reason! Connie was half her size! And in the next scene, she was normal! The same with John! What was going on?

You, English-only speakers, you are lucky for once. God, what an abomination.

A Preview of Version 3 by usa2z

 

The preview of Student Transfer v3 is sublime,¿and ineffable, it starts in the branch connecting to Popular Possession, but this time John and Kiyoshi go and possess popular guys instead of girls.

It ends up with Kiyoshi's acceptance of his real identity and getting closer to John in ways both didn't know before, incredibly beautiful.

(Spoiler: In summary, this was a short April Fools joke).

Body Switchers by mbrad

 

While Body Switchers' style will be disappointing for those who look TF for the psychological drama attached to it, people who like the physical part of the swaps would have enjoyed these frenzies where characters focus all the time in the bodies each time they enter to.

In this story, John and Kiyoshi are given the power to switch bodies by will, which they do start with their two best friends, afterward, they start swapping with the bodies of every person they see at school for one reason or another, swapping Brad and Zoey to give Brad a lesson, swap with Tori and Vanessa to give them a lesson, swap Sayaka with Cornelia to give her a lesson, swap Mina with Eric for an experiment, or swap with Kiyoshi and John's mom out of pure lust and curiosity.

Aside from the loose notion characters have from their canon personalities, all of them are left to their barebones acting mostly by the gender stereotype they are part on, characters usually have the same cadence and overall they all point out the basic gender roles every time they get swapped, boys are stronger, bigger, girls are more attractive and weak, this could have gotten repetitive for some but the people who do not want to look too deep into the logic of the situation to get a quickie done would have enjoyed it without issues, and in the way the scenario is written, they could have gotten a quickie one after the other.

The swaps come and go rapidly, showing a similar approach to scenarios like John's Sudden Lifechange but with relatively better results and a relatively more logical plotline, the logic doesn't work the same as in real life, but it is comparable to TV sitcom logic.

What we start to see here is a certain division on the Student Transfer audience, people who are into TF for the psychological, nonsexual aspects of it, and people who like the sexual and physical aspects of it; in that sense, Body Switchers pointed to the latter group a lot more, logic is a secondary aspect of the plot since the characters are there only to acknowledge the body differences they perceive with each swap, overall, the scenario didn't look to take itself too seriously, and what has proposed it was fun if you were part of the demographic is targeted. 

This scenario would have been recommended, but because John and Kiyoshi are tagged as underage people at the end of one of the routes, and as well the existence of one Natsumi scene, this scenario had to be removed for violating TFGS rules due to depicting kids in sexual situations. People who want to read something of this same style can still check its reboot available with the name of The Gift of Switching for Student Transfer v4.