Cold as Ice by Hizack

 

Fan cover made by Clavietika

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Into the Janeverse by Clavietika the Gynaecoid

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Additional Info:

-Kiyoshi Route

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Yuuni Route

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

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

Yui's Intervention by Alternate

 

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

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

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

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

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

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.