Student Transfer Version VIII: The Dissolution of Hope

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Student Transfer Version 8.0 Review
Platforms: PC(Reviewed), Mac, Linux, Android
Developer/Publisher: The Student Transfer Development Team
Website – Download – TFGS Page – Discord – Official Flowchart – Natalie.TF Page

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Student Transfer is a community develosilped visual novel that centers around TSF/TG/gender bending, body swapping, mind control, transformation, possession, and more. Since it started development in 2015, the title has grown dramatically, with Version 8 featuring over 1.5 million words of writing. 

The game follows John Davis, a fairly unremarkable high school student whose ordinary life becomes extraordinary one fateful night. When he either receives an incredibly powerful alien remote or comes into possession of a magical spellbook written by his ancestors. 

From this initial starting point, the game opens up into a sprawling web of different routes, arranged in a manner more comparable to a choose-your-own-adventure interactive story than a typical route-driven visual novel. It makes navigation more than a bit daunting, so I would strongly recommend that all players use a flowchart to make their way through the game. Whether it be the official interactive flowchart provided by the dev team, or the condensed alien and magic flowcharts I created myself.

Because the game is so expansive, it is not feasible for me to talk about everything in a single review, but the core strengths of Student Transfer can be seen throughout most routes. By being a collaborative title, Student Transfer invites writers to bring their own unique voices and spins on the world, characters, and subject matter of the game. Thereby giving the title more breadth, diversity, and content overall than it would have if there was only a single creative lead. 

From jovial lighthearted romps to dismal situations where one’s life and identity shatter before their very eyes, the variety of the content allows the game to remain interesting even after so many expansions. And with plenty of unexplored avenues and underutilized characters, it doesn’t seem like that will change anytime soon.

By being a team, the developers are able to check over and edit each other’s work to keep the universe and game overall consistent, while sharing their skills and technical knowledge. This is especially impressive given how more poorly managed collaborative writing-based efforts like this are typically a free-for-all of quality, and just how consistent the game is despite having so many writers. Admittedly, you can spot a stylistic shift when a route brings in another writer, but the writing quality is generally high enough that this change is permissible.

Furthermore, by being a title with such a focused target audience, a niche group of enthusiasts, Student Transfer has access to writers who truly understand how to use its assorted subject matter to tell a good story. They understand the narrative potential of TSF and transformation and use it as a tool to craft quality character-driven narratives that only delve into the sexual end of things when it adds to the story… Well, at least for the most part.

The characters themselves are another highlight. They are simple enough to be easily understood and written by various members of the dev team, yet all housing ample room for depth and exploration. Yes, they can be a bit tropey, and plenty of them are underdeveloped, but I would consider this to be a strength as well. For it provides so many opportunities for growth and expansion that, even 8.5 years later, many of them still haven’t been explored. (Even those who really should’ve been by now.)

These open opportunities and approachable cast has also led Student Transfer to grow beyond a robust visual novel and into a platform for TSF storytelling through its fan-created scenarios. Stories disconnected from the base game that use the same engine, assets, and often universe.

I actually began reviewing these scenarios back in 2019, and after going through over 70 of them, I can safely say that they run the gamut in regards to quality. Some are ESL messes of half-baked ideas, abandoned as soon as they debut with an unfinished introduction. Others are easily on par with the routes featured in the base game and, depending on your preferences, they might even be a bit better. They do a lot to extend the life of Student Transfer, keep the project relevant even during the long lulls between full version updates, and are a great way for fans to become developers thanks to the shared tool sets. You can find a comprehensive list of all scenarios on the official Student Transfer website.

Now, I’ve praised the writing behind this project, but writing is merely one area where Student Transfer triumphs, as it also aims to impress with its visuals. The title is assembled using assets borrowed from other visual novels, primarily those from the developer Candysoft. While this leads to some stylistic discrepancies, the dev team has really made these assets their own over the past few years. Characters are given custom outfits, expressions, and poses. CGs are retrofitted to work with the stories developers are trying to tell. Some are even fully custom jobs, which really speaks to their dedication. And the whole communal aspects around these characters and game make it easy to forget that none of them are wholly original creations.

However, the reason why I praise the presentation of Student Transfer has less to do with the assets themselves, and more what the developers do with them. Characters giddily flicker between emotions and move across the screen like a stage. They tilt, tumble, and shake about when the scene calls for it. And there is even a camera system of sorts, allowing scenes to be cast into the background and make the world feel like a three-dimensional place.

It all makes the presentations of most other visual novels seem stilted in comparison, and has led to some of the most impressive presentational feats I have seen in the genre. Unfortunately, this level of visual flair is not evenly applied— different people do the animations and they have different standards— and the game is held back by its 720p resolution. This is because the source assets— character sprites, CGs, and backgrounds, were all from games made with that resolution in mind. 

While there are higher resolution sprites than the ones seen in the game’s directory, and it is very possible to upscale in-game assets to a higher resolution, that would be a lot of work. And it’d probably break most things in the process. With screen resolutions only getting bigger, it seems like something the developers will need to tackle eventually… Or they could just rest on their laurels and not spend a few weeks processing and editing assets enhanced by Waifu2x.

That covers my general thoughts on the game, but what makes each new release special is, of course, the route updates they bring. Following a 19 month development cycle, Version 8 introduces over 300,000 words of new content. Concluding the Magic Allie route, adding to four existing routes, and introducing another four. Meaning I had a lot to cover, so let’s cut the boilerplate and dive in.

But, fair warning, this is easily the most mixed slate of additions I have seen with a new version of Student Transfer, and I’m not going to be holding anything back. I love this game, adore it, respect it, and admire it on all fronts. Which is why I get concerned when I feel its quality is compromised.

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Magic Allie

V8 Credits: Raines (writer), Choripan (writer), Yosoro (editor), RegrettiAndMeatballs (editor), XBP (editor), ZeBeste (animator), JCJace45 (commentor?), Kisara (editor/animator), Luckysquid (editor), Sillypirate (editor), Calaman (animator)

The headliner this time around is the conclusion of the Magic Allie route. It’s taken three and a half years for it to conclude, but now that It’s finally finished, I can safely say it is yet another banger. 

The route sees John practice his magic ‘in private’ only to garner the attention of Allison, a classmate he knows more by reputation than anything else. Rather than wiping her memories, John instead takes up her offer to become his assistant and the two proceed to test out a spell. Rushed experimentation leads to messes, and an accidental body swap leaves John as Allison for a day.

After finagling his way through her life for an afternoon, the two begin forging out their own relationship. One that sees them dig into John’s big book o’ spells, getting into scrambles as their magic backfires on them in either comedic or tragic ways, and rapidly escalate their friendship into something more intimate. Structurally, it’s a pretty common formula seen across many routes in Student Transfer, though there are a lot of things that make this route stand out.

Allison, despite originally being interpreted as, and presenting as, a ditz, is depicted as a studious and intelligent person with a penchant for the language arts and aspirations to become a novelist. She is a forwardly romantic and sexually confident woman, standing in contrast with the many virgins at Tina Koya, being rather playful and open. And she is quite fascinated with the prospect of being a cute boy for a while. Which you just don’t see very often in the world of TSF.

The way magic is used starts out pretty standard with a simple possession-based body swap, but the more the route goes on, the more daring it becomes. From the bold decision to throw in a chapter involving a body swap with a talking dog. To the personality manipulation done as Allison tries to make herself into Super Allison. 

But my favorite has to be the introduction of a potion that causes someone to think they are someone else for hours, or potentially days. This is a wild enough idea to build a whole route around. Especially if one wants to do a pseudo body swap involving a large number of people. Especially if two people think they are the same person. And especially if you use this to trick people into thinking they are body swapping, when really it’s only mental alteration.

In Magic Allie though, this narrative mechanic is mostly used for role-playing purposes. To help ease the rapid acceleration of John and Allison’s development, make the kinky sex they get up to have more connection and weight. And to fulfill Allison’s mostly implied desire to see herself as John and him as her. I don’t quite get what the allure is for her. But I’d imagine that as a fantasy lover, she has read a lot of stories from the perspective of cute 6/10 milquetoast White dudes, and that describes John to a tee.

The journey getting there is a well-paced one, broken up with reckless highs and crushing lows, though what really sealed Magic Allie as a top route are the endings. The high ending featuring a double epilogue that rightfully escalates every part of their relationship, sees it billow to the natural conclusion, even in their most precious moments. It did everything I wanted to see, and with ample erotic absurdity. The mid ending is… satisfying enough. It’s not really trying to do much more than the high ending beyond incorporating a different CG. A more grounded state for their relationship considering these two just met two weeks ago. And the introduction of a bit of continuity that broke my ‘Student Transfer takes place in 2013′ theory. While the low ending is being a twisted flavor of havoc that shattered what I thought were implicit rules for what developers are allowed to do. And then, just when I think it’s aiming to be a bitter end, it goes hog wild with a final twist that… I just adore.

That all being said, reading this route from front to back— as I always do— you can tell this was developed over the span of four years. Not necessarily in regards to quality, though it does get better, but in regards to the direction of the story. The start is all about John being forced into being Allison while she is sent home as him. The V7 content is about the two forging more of a relationship, dealing with the initial fallout of day 3, roping in Allison’s friend Irene more, and showing the consequences of using magic. While the V8 content is more of an effort to wrap up this story while introducing more ‘romantic’ elements. Meaning repurposed sex scenes. I initially thought this shift in direction was a bit strange, but then I remembered that she’s a lover of literature, and book people are notoriously kinky, so it all made sense.

Also, and this is more of an aside, I’m not a fan about ‘everybody’ learning about Rita’s secret partway through the route, yet that never being revealed to the player, nor is said secret available in the game. I’ll appreciate that when it is added to the game, but… the dev team said they had plans for a Rita route in 2018, and they never did anything (public) with them. Hell, I don’t even know where it would be in-game.

That being said, the Magic Allie route captures about everything I want and expect from a Student Transfer route. Good characterizations, funny antics, interesting applications of transformation concepts, big drama, erotic funsies with a strong narrative purpose, and some utterly wild turns to keep me on my toes. It’s worth coming back to the game just for this.

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Michelle Swap

V8 Credits: XBP (writer/animator), Yosoro (editor), Raines (editor), Vuanaunt (commenter?), JCJace45 (editor), RegrettiAndMeatballs (editor), Calaman (animator), Sillypirate (animator), Goopy (animator).

Building off of the permutation where the remote is confiscated by Yui and John goes commitment-less until day 3 history, this route sees Michelle confront John about the device. He naturally plays it off as nothing, but Michelle is one of the top students at Tina Koya, and member of the newspaper club, so she doesn’t take ‘it’s nothing’ for an answer. Realizing the only options are to come clean— or mind control her— John reveals the nature of the device to Michelle, who proceeds to wedge herself into the story of a lifetime. Like a typical journalist.

Upon learning this salient information, Michelle decides she simply cannot let John continue holding sole possession of the remote. However, Michelle is a bit too self-conscious— a bit too empathetic, to just steal it outright and use this remote to reshape the world or what have you. So she tries to frame their relationship as a ‘partnership’ while making John unable to use the remote. She tries to logic him into seeing things her way, but even John isn’t quite that gullible, and begins plotting a way to get back at Michelle and get out of this unwanted partnership. …All while ‘enjoying himself’ in the process.

John realizes that he might be in this for the long haul, so he tries to gain some leverage and connection with Michelle. He convinces her to repeatedly swap bodies under the guise of an ‘experiment.’. He presents as her in a manner either meant to appease or frustrate her. And he convinces her to use the remote more and more, hoping that the lock placed around him will, eventually, loosen enough for him to redistribute power or get out of this mess.

Or to give a different reading of the text… John pretty much decides that the best way out of this situation is to take a page out of The Art of War, recognizing that: “If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate [her].” And he does pretty much that. He keeps pressuring her to do things she clearly does not want to, and tries applying her same breed of logic himself, causing Michelle to begrudgingly agree with his plans. Whether that be extending their swap or making her exchange her precious D&D knowledge.

It’s actually a lot of fun seeing John, who is usually presented as the straight man next to more extreme characters, play the role of the chaotic one. And when he’s on a role, the dude can be such a little freak. Flashing his borrowed ass at school. Inventing ways to get off even with mental commands, or just finding the one thing that he knows gets on Michelle’s nerves and picks at it like a scab.

Compared to the introduction seen in V7, the additions in V8 do a far better job of selling the vision and structure of this route. While it does unfortunately only contain part of a day’s worth of content what’s there is strong and leaves me optimistic of the future of this route.

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Charlotte Swap

V8 Credit: Narg (writer/animator), RegrettiAndMeatballs (editor), Luckysquid (editor), Kisara (animator), BiasedEyes (editor), 

As, hierarchically, the first alien route, Charlotte Swap sees John, predictably, swap bodies with a college girl named Charlotte, but in a way that brings forth unforeseen consequences. After bumping into her on his way to school, he accidentally registers her with the alien remote and executes the swap while they are several miles apart. Rather than transferring the entirety of their minds though, the device only transferred parts of their identity. Meaning John still remembers being himself and Charlotte still remembers being Charlotte, but neither remember much about their lives and find themselves predisposed to acting like who they appear to be. 

As the days trek on, the two find themselves swapping back to their own bodies in random increments, jostling them between two lives while exchanging dribs and drabs of their identity. Despite this, they try to carry out their lives, hoping that, in due time, they will be themselves again in both body and mind. Conceptually, I love what this route is doing. I think it is an interesting approach to a body swap that breaks down the myriad facets that make up a mind, and there are a lot of little things I like.

Charlotte is an endearing scatterbrain, and a bit of a flirt, so seeing John deal with these new impulses as he pursues a new boyfriend is a fun identity remix. I appreciate how John gets to look at some of his friends with a new light as his brain is thrown through the blender. The karaoke scene is still an absolute treat. And I think the parallel relationships that John and Charlotte both get up to is a concept with a lot of room for variability that could dramatically change the route’s endings.

That all being said… I’m not really sure what the ‘deal’ with the Charlotte route is after the latest update. Despite getting three additions over the past three years, I do not know where it is going. I don’t get how exactly the personality and memory fragmentation is really supposed to work. The story feels like it is barely a third of the way through its intended narrative, so I’m not sure what direction it’s going to head toward. And going through it, I could easily tell when each new batch of additions were made, as there is a perceptible shift in how the story is being presented or told.

I still like the Charlotte route. I still find it to be promising. I appreciate there being some update instead of having this join the dozens of abandoned stubs. And based on Narg’s prior work, I can tell they have a unique story that they want to tell. But at this point I just want to see that story be told— be finished— so that I can appreciate it and enjoy it for what it is.

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Kiyoshi Wish

V8 Credits: Luckysquid (writer), Bungis (writer), XBP (editor/animator), RegrettiAndMeatballs (editor), Calaman (animator), JCJace45 (writer/editor/animator)

Built off of one of the dozen potential Circe routes, Kiyoshi Wish sees John use Circe’s boundless might to spread his powers with his best(?) friend. Except rather than just make Kiyoshi into a perverted wizard Circe decides to initiate a soul exchange between Kiyoshi and John’s mother, Sandra. Which is like a body swap, but more thorough.

After Circe’s meddling, Kiyoshi is left bonded to Sandra’s body and Sandra is left bonded to Kiyoshi’s, with possession, transformation, and so forth not working on them. Furthermore, Kiyoshi now has Sandra’s immense magical powers (someone needs to pick up the magic mom route), while Sandra has been brainwashed into thinking she’s Kiyoshi. Except she does not fully understand how Kiyoshi acts and needs to be taught how ‘she’ should behave, which makes for a funny side-plot if nothing else.

Now, one of the first things that I took note of while playing Kiyoshi Wish is how… it feels more like a scenario more than a part of the base game. John immediately takes action and shows initiative from moment one, expressing more urgency without getting stuck in his head. Kiyoshi manages to acclimate to Sandra’s life surprisingly well, and it feels like his mind has been altered, even though I don’t think Circe explicitly did anything to him. 

It definitively states that the shrine maiden, Setsuna, lacks familiarity with magic— which is, one, a weird place to put this reveal, and two, less interesting than if she did. John just blazes through his new powerset and just casually drops the fact that he can make possession puppets. There’s a squirrel named Jerry who drinks Kiyoshi’s breast milk from the toilet. Which… people had to approve as part of the in-game canon. And, as one would expect from a route kickstarted by Luckysquid, it is dedicated to TOTAL GYARU MILF-IFICATION without any reservations or shame. 

Now, I don’t bring this up as a negative. I love the fact that this game is so seasoned and comfortable with itself that it can just zoom through to the coolest cuts of its story, without prefacing everything in the route intro. (Because you can only write about someone discovering magic so many times before it gets a trifle bit dull.) And the developers waste basically no time getting this ball rolling, slamming into shit, and just taking the story in whatever wild direction they can think of. Even the more somber scenes carry a sense of crazy billowing in the background, and everything moves at such a rapid pace that I never found there to be a dull moment.

I’m glossing over the actual details and events of this route, in part because there is so much, and in part because I truly don’t have anything more substantive to say about them other than unabashed praise. The presentation left me cackling with delight upon seeing the effort put into even tiny scenes. Every time I thought it was going to devolve into raw self-indulgence, it surprised me with a novel new idea. While it is far from being complete (it’s maybe a third done by my rough estimate), what’s there is simply fantastic.

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Magic Delinquents

V8 Credits: Bungis (writer/animator), RegrettiAndMeatballs (editor), Kisara (animator), Calaman (editor), Luckysquid (editor), Sillypirate (animator)

Not this again… I really don’t want to be this bitter but a reviewer ain’t worth shit unless they’re honest.

Building off of the common magic route leading into day 4, the Magic Delinquents route sees John bomb his math test and leave early to devise a way to cheat. As he leaves though, he is confronted by Vanessa, who begins imploring him to help her cheat on her math test. He tries to help her, only for Tori to get into the mix, and as personalities clash and John tries to manage his magical prowess, things escalate, antics ensue, and frustrations overwhelm.

When I reviewed this route previously, I was very critical of its execution. The way it stretched out its basic conflict— cheat on a math test— across an hour. For padding the dialogue with relentless bickering from its central characters and being, quite simply, boring. But going back to it now, in its bigger, more expanded rendition… I like it even less. I tried being nice last time, tried finding the gems in the rough, and wanted to cling onto the hope that this route was salvageable. But now? …I think Magic Delinquents is so bad it should be cut from the game.

That’s an incredibly harsh thing to say, but it’s hard for me to find anything to really like about this route. The conflict really is limited to John trying to cheat on his math test, and getting roped into trouble because Tori and Vanessa refuse to let him solve the problem in the most direct way possible. The process takes forever, lasting at least an hour into the route before it’s completed, and not only is the execution boring, but it doesn’t even work in the end, because their plan was fundamentally flawed. It’s a story about characters trying to solve a problem, only to fail, because they’re a bunch of dumbasses!

Tori and Vanessa, a pair of interesting characters who warrant their own dedicated route, are made out to be ungrateful, untrustworthy, and entitled characters. Vanessa imposes on John and takes it as a given that he will help her cheat, and when given power, she proceeds to abuse it. Tori is controlling and superstitious of John, shouting and threatening him to do things her way, demanding his respect without ever showing him any respect in return. Their role here makes them out to be a pair of spoiled brats. Not the type of people worth the time of day, let alone the sort you would want to see as tagalongs in a magical adventure about doing mad crimes and other delinquency-related activities. 

Even when putting the game on auto-play, forcing myself through the dialogue as quickly as I could, it still felt like it took forever for the story to get on with what it is supposed to be about. I called this bickering last time, and there is a lot of that, but the problem is more a lack of point or direction. Clearly, this story is about John forming bonds with Tori and Vanessa and going on some manner of lark with them as he flexes his powers. But… why is this the best approach? How is this the most creative or interesting way to show Tori and Vanessa as they are introduced to magic. If you want to write a story about John getting mixed in with ne’er-do-wells and using magical powers, there are so many better places to start than… this.

The most kind thing I can say about this route is that, inarguably, a good deal of effort was made. The route has numerous minor divergence points, letting players approach problems in a variety of unique manners, with substantial scenes locked behind them. A lot of which are fun alternate diversions and have some merit, have some good ideas. However, I was so pissed off at this route by the time they appeared, I had negative interest in them, strictly because the route underwhelmed and disappointed me to such an extreme degree that I could not trust it to do anything right.

This is not me trying to shit on the work of the lead writer, Bungis. They worked on a fair bit on Kiyoshi Wish, and I just said that route was fantastic. The fundamental problem is not the writing quality. It’s the fact that Magic Delinquents, conceptually, based on the outline of whoever prepared… is a bad story. A story that moves at a snail’s pace, does little to endear the reader to the cast, and makes the bold choice to dedicate 80 to 100 minutes to a chapter where nothing is achieved beyond the mutual frustration of all parties.

In conclusion, it’s been seven years (exactly) since I covered a story that mishandled its premise and subject matter this badly. Even if this route does get updated again… I really don’t want to give it another chance, or even think about it after I publish this review. I don’t give a shit anymore.

…But I will concede it’s better than the utter crap I wrote 10 years ago.

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Kyoko Mistake

V8 Credits: Calaman (writer/animator), Luckysquid (editor), Vuanaunt (commenter?), JCJace45 (commenter?), Yona (editor), Yosoro (editor), RegrettiAndMeatballs (editor), Sillypirate (editor), BiasedEyes (editor)

The Kyoko Mistake route was introduced in V7, and while it’s not done beyond a short-ending, it’s finally progressed past the introduction and into the core of the story. Serving as the (somehow) only Kyoko-centered route in Student Transfer, this route sees John introduce his alien remote to his alien fanatic friend, and the two proceed to experiment with it. Transforming themselves, messing around with mind control, analyzing its applications, and looping the other K-buds into the fun. 

While not a ton happens during this early section, it remains engaging enough. Characters trickle through experiments at a steady rate. A series of micro-conflicts keep the proceeding days interesting. And the snippets of new information the player collects helps them paint a clearer picture of who Kyoko is as a character, both in her daily life and her passions.

After a month of this, Kyoko gets curious and tries opening up the alien remote, swapping her and John, and partially breaking it in the process. While the memory transfer, mind control, and sex inversion TF (or gender transformation if you dunno what a gender is) still work, the cloning and swapping functions are broken. Meaning John and Kyoko are stuck living as each other, with no feasible way to fix the remote, and little hope in contacting the aliens about a warranty.

This is about where the V7 content ended, and V8 is all about seeing the characters, namely John in Kyoko, deal with this melancholic situation. With a dwindling hope of ever returning to normal, the two must steadily assume each other’s lives and everything that comes with them. Friends, families, homes, perks, burdens, problems, and every expectation placed on them. 

On a pure conceptual level, I love this path. One of the most trite ways a body swap story can end is if the body swapping device just breaks, and the affected parties just go on to live their new lives. It is a vast oversimplification that ignores so much tension, internal growth, dread, and learning curve of being someone else full-time and all-time. But Kyoko Mistake explores the immediate aftermath of this, spread out over several weeks— possibly even months— to show the reader just how these characters are adapting.

And during this adjustment period, they still have the alien remote, still have some of its functionalities, still have the power and possibilities it provides, and… they have their friends. John and Kyoko stick together, Kiyoshi and Katrina help them however they can, and they still hang out together, letting them feel, even in some faint way, as if things are still the way they’re supposed to be. Which in turn helps them stave off their depressing reality, thanks to the jovial insistences of Katrina and the much needed comic relief of Kiyoshi. …Or rather Kiyo, his ditzy anime cheerleader alter ego.

While I’d gauge that the story is only about 67% done, I’m highly impressed with how it has progressed. It has a good level of variability with the available options and even splits off into three different strands at the end of current content. It nicely manages the highs and lows of the experience. The characterization is on point for the entire cast. And it is doing something distinctly different from anything else in the game. I am very happy with it, though I do have some slight criticisms. 

The introduction and its antics are pleasant on an initial playthrough, they delay the beginning of this route’s actual conflict for a solid hour, if not longer. They’re fun, but it almost feels as if Calaman was committed to making this route feel self-contained, without any knowledge of any other routes. Most routes try to go for this, but this one really wants you to know how this group operates and how they used this remote.

The short-end present here is simultaneously a dread-wrought nightmare fest that left me more than a little shook with its execution… and kind of arbitrary. It’s not directly acknowledged why John has to do the thing, when having them do it seems like the worst possible way to execute that action. And it gets back to something that I’ve never quite liked about how memory transfers work in Student Transfer. How people seemingly cannot discern the difference between their memories and transferred memories. It makes some sense, but it often seems this feature just exists to cause identity death or other identity fragmentation. 

Beyond that though, I really like Kyoko Mistake, I’m confident that it can stick this landing and be another landmark route for this game, and I look forward to seeing it as the headline attraction for V9. …Maybe. You can never be too sure with these things.

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The Bet

V8 Credits: Sillypirate (writer/animator), Mimo (editor), CobaltCore (editor), BiasedEyes (editor), Calaman (editor/animator), RegrettiAndMeatballs (editor)

The Bet route is the continuation of the ‘Friends’ route introduced way back in the 2018 release of Version 3.0, where John introduces the alien remote to… his friends. Or as I like to call them, the K-buds, because gammaflux had a thing for K names. 

In their initial fooling around with the remote, Katrina and Kiyoshi wind up entering into a bet where they exchange bodies for ten days and whoever calls it quits first has to do something demeaning. A pretty standard premise to keep characters in different bodies for a significant stretch of time, long enough for them to see and understand the life of another person.

The choice of Katrina and Kiyoshi is a strong one, as while both of them are ‘friends’, you can’t picture them hanging out with just each other. Kiyoshi is a classically trained anime pervert— only missing the swirly glasses. While Katrina is something of an active nerdy tomboy, and one of the only girls Kiyoshi doesn’t relentlessly hit on. It has great potential, but the execution… misses a few marks. 

One of the core appeals and challenges of a body swap is the lack of intimate knowledge. The swapees likely do not know how to behave as or live as the person they now appear to be, even if they are friends. Katrina knows Kiyoshi, but not how he lives or what exactly he does, or what he would say in any situation. And the challenges of the titular bet should be seeing how well she can adapt to this situation, using her own cunning and skill, right? Well, no.

Rather than just be a body swap endurance story, The Bet increasingly becomes another reprisal of the identity exchange seen in Mem Swap and Leona Swap. Except… from a questionable perspective. Forgive the tangent, but I need to lay out some conventions.

In transformation fiction, you typically want to follow either the person who underwent a transformation, or someone close to them. A roommate, a lover, whatever. This is because that is the most effective way to observe the changes a character undergoes. It helps the reader understand the physical/mental ramifications of these changes and how they affect the transformed person’s life.

However, unlike most routes, John, the point-of-view character, is not subject to the transformation and he’s not even deeply or routinely involved in the transformations, like in Popular Possession. John is not the actual main character of this story, as this is the story of Katrina and Kiyoshi as they undergo a body swap and incremental mental transformation. And the most interesting part of the story would be their day-to-day lives, what’s happening in their heads. Sure, they say what happened to them when they reconvene with or interact with John, but we do not get to see the struggles or successes.

Another problem with this perspective is that there needs to be something for John to do, which leads to a series of daily B-plots where John and Kyoko mess around with the remote. These sections are… entertaining. Watching John transform Kyoko and force her to act like his own impression of Sandra? That’s cool! Having John and Kyoko swap bodies so they can have parallel sleepovers with their bodily displaced friend? I like that! But they also have basically nothing to do with the core storyline.

The actual execution of this storyline also feels very… toothless. Neither Katrina nor Kiyoshi can do anything sexual as each other. Neither can cause a ruckus or fuss at school. Both maintain a low profile, so there’s little chance of conflict arising there. And due to the ability for them to ask John for help with his space remote, there really is no sense of danger between the two. They are in a competition with each other, yet it never feels like it. The challenge of living as each other generally gets easier as they are given more memories, more information, and a greater sense of comfort with their borrowed bodies. And the route simply feels like it is missing a certain level of tension or conflict.

It all feels too concerned with being safe, without letting anything bad happen, when… the best routes in Student Transfer emerge from bad things happening, and characters working through them. Correcting their mistakes, doubling down on them, and getting thrown into an incrementally greater mess. Here though? I just don’t see that, and I think the biggest example of that is seen in its short end. 

Well, I say short, but it’s actually a lengthy side story bolted onto a character giving up. There are some entertaining antics, a little bit of tension, but in the end, after it seems like things are about to enter a more precarious end game, the would-be antagonist just… gives up. The characters clean up the mess. And we are treated to a milquetoast conclusion that really makes me wonder when/if someone is actually going to develop that character’s route. It’s been five years.

Now, none of this is meant to say that I think the route itself is badly written. The character writing is generally on point. The shenanigans John and the K-buds get up to are entertaining, as they almost always are. There are a surprising amount of insights into both characters throughout the route. Namely the fact that Kiyoshi is an orphan who lost his parents 9 years ago in the 5th grade. (Do the math and spot the flaw with that statement.) And I think Sillypirate makes a generally strong introduction as a new writer. I just think the concept and premise have problems.

The Bet is not finished— it’s about 60%-ish percent done based on my intuition. It is always possible that the route could be turned around in the end, and I could wind up eating my words. I hope it does, as I want to like what’s here… but boy do I wish it took things in a different direction.

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Sitcom

V8 Credits: TgEncounters (writer/animator), Luckysquid (editor), XBP (editor), RegrettiAndMeatballs (editor), Sillypirate (editor), BiasedEyes (editor)

Well, can’t say I ever expected someone to pick up this option… or take it in this direction. Built off of one of the 20-something potential Circe routes, Sitcom sees John wish to become a TV star. An obviously terrible wish, and one that I always assumed would end with John becoming a local San Fransokyo actress— kind of like that one part from Backtracking by Chori. 

Instead, the Sitcom route sees Circe absorb the collective entity of American television through the power of green demon magic. Inspired by this forbidden knowledge never meant for biological demons, she decides to rework the reality around John, turning him into a star of Happy Go-Go Princess Dreamsuite. A classic sitcom about four quirky college girls who, due to an administrative oopsie, are all roommates, living in a lavish college dorm room so large you could swear it’s a soundstage.

As part of this reality rework, everybody has been given a new personality, name and role, revising and remixing the cast, while giving the four leads full awareness of their current predicament. John is Jocelyn José-Lynne Jo$elyn Joselyn, a stuck-up rich girl who only cares for herself, but over the course of the next three seasons will come to learn that friendship really is magic. Katrina is Kimmie, the shy nerdy girl who still dresses in her sailor fuku even in college. The demure and determined rule-follower Yui is Yuliana, the easygoing party girl who’s also an 18-year-old alcoholic— the best kind. The rough and rowdy Tori Vega (I just got that reference, and I hate it) is Tamantha, the quaint girl next door who doesn’t say any swears.

While their personalities are not replaced, Circe’s magic forces them to act it out when the cameras are rolling, and they have little choice but to play her twisted little game. A game that sees this ragtag group of ST regulars forced to act their way through an archetypical tongue-and-cheek sitcom. This is paired with brief respites of autonomy as they reflect on their actions, devise a plan of actions, and gradually decide on an approach. To either grit their teeth and hope that compliance will lead to freedom, or try and botch things so hard Crice gets bored and lets them go… Or leaves them permanently altered, for funsies.

Starting off with this route, I was a bit worried. After a rapid introduction, things come to a bit of a lull as the writer needs to introduce the cast, show their personalities, and have them discover how this bizarre staged reality works. But once it gets going, it settles into a good groove. The antics lined up for the cast, while rout, are executed with a level of vigor and enthusiasm that makes them compelling. The main four have surprisingly good chemistry together, both with their real identities and the identities grafted onto them. The rapid personality alterations are a great source of comedy and drama, with the cast being entertaining no matter what personality they’re operating under. And John does such a good job living up to the bratty rich girl character he’s been assigned that I didn’t even want to see him fight it.

That being said, I think this route has the most… underwhelming presentation I’ve seen in Student Transfer. Let me try to explain. This is a revamped universe, crafted by a demon, designed and modeled after a TV sitcom about a bunch of college girls. In my mind, that necessitates production values. Glitz, glam, the whole shebang, 110% of that ST flair! The music should be more pronounced and upbeat to match the tone of the show. Sound effects should be used liberally to sell what is happening. Characters should be animated and represent the slight overacting common among the sitcom genre. 

Whereas this route… uses a door closing sound effect for when someone slams a table in a wall. It has a vase shatter without the iconic vase cracking sound effect. It maintains a pretty mellow soundtrack even when at a party full of teens drinking beer, instead of blaring the poppiest beatsin Kevin MacLeod’s robust song library. It has characters attend a dance where the background is full of static, pure black, silhouettes who don’t even do a basic looping dance animation— minus ten points! And it says a character boogie on the dance floor… while the animations have them standing in place— minus forty points!

This premise could be elevated to such a higher level with more production values, and I know I’m not asking for something unreasonable. I’ve seen the lengths that the dev team has gone to just to make scenes hit a little bit harder! I’ve seen the incredible things scenario devs can do with the tools the developers made. While I get that what I’m describing is a lot of work, that’s the price you gotta pay if you wanna replicate showbiz, bay-bee! …Which begs the question of why a new dev team member did this route’s animations on their own. At least, from what I was able to glance.

After this strong introduction, I am excited to see Sitcom continue. Despite (partially) being a tribute to one of the most rout genres around, it captures a creative energy, passion, and remix factor that I really appreciate seeing in Student Transfer. It expands what the game is, what it can be, and from a project rapidly nearing its tenth anniversary, I’m delighted to see people still take things in new directions. Just… make sure to give the next episode of Happy Go-Go Princess Dreamsuite the pizzazz it deserves.

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Mystery

V8 Credits: Iwana (writer), Calaman (animator), JCJace45 (consultant?)

The Murder route was the sole developed route in the original release of Student Transfer back on November 8, 2015, and it was… not very good. It was a mess of ideas and while I was super impressed that the original dev team managed to basically make this game from scratch after announcing the idea on July 31, 2015. I remember. I was there. And… shit, I could have been a part of the original dev team! I was wrapping up my first novel, so I had experience, damn it! Ah well, it’s probably for the best, as I was a depressed mess back then, and I went on to do my own crazy stuff.

Anyway, the Murder route has been sealed away from the public ever since the release of Version 4.0 back on February 28th, 2019, when the route was ‘closed for rewrites.’ It has been over five years, and the dev team has finally come up with… something! 

The Mystery route sees John share the discovery of the alien remote with Kiyoshi first thing, and things go about as one would expect. They test it out, screw up, finagle some way to fix things, before rewarding themselves by testing the sex inversion function, bringing Jane and Kiyo out to go on an adventure where no man has ever gone before. But before they can make their maiden voyage, John gets suspicious of how the atrocious Jack Mallory is opening up a door, and they decide to mind control him and prevent him from harassing John every class. Things go awry, they decide to go back to being boys for the day, except the battery runs out of juice after transforming Kiyoshi, leaving John stuck as Jane for the rest of the night. So he spends it at Kiyoshi’s house and… things trail off from there.

…Yeah, the Mystery route is pretty uneventful in its debut outing. Hell, there isn’t really an underlying mystery. Unless Jack Mallory— who I still believe to be a rapist, pedophile, and vaginal taxidermist— acting suspicious is a ‘mystery.’

This makes it hard for me to really say much about it. The writer has a good grasp on the dynamic of John and Kiyoshi. The initial scenes of them as Jane and Kiyo are a lot of fun. The way Jack completely shifts his persona when confronted by Jane is a very telling aspect of his person and overall character. Pretty much all of the writing here is good, and I don’t really have any major notes or criticisms. …Beyond an exasperated grumble over how little was done in so much time.

Looking at the Git, Iwana started production in January 2023, left the repo untouched for six months, finished writing the current content October 2023, and then Calaman came in to do the animations. I get that this is an unpaid position and that writing all this is a significant task. But if a route is this important, has been alluded to for so long, shouldn’t it be a higher priority? If the person responsible for it is not doing things in a timely manner, then shouldn’t someone else be asked to contribute?

It’s all such a bittersweet feeling. I’m glad that they are finally doing something… but I wish that they did more.

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A Big Bushel of Criticisms

I hope that this review so far has illustrated how highly I think of Student Transfer, but let me make this abundantly clear. I adore Student Transfer. It has done so much for TSF and transformation as a genre that I scarcely know how to articulate it. It has been a launching pad for hundreds of creators at this point, contributing with their own scenarios or in the base game itself. People who worked on it have gone on to create some utterly fantastic titles that definitely would not exist without Student Transfer. It is a treasure trove of quality TSF stories, spread across both the base game and the hundreds of scenarios fans have released for it. And without it, my best friend, Cassandra Catherine Wright, wouldn’t be who she is today, and I never would’ve met her.

That being said… while playing Version 8 of Student Transfer, I could not escape the sense that things were off. That there are so many things that should be done to improve and enhance this almost project that has been going on for nine years, but… aren’t.

The consistency that I’ve praised became less apparent as I went from route to route, finding the gulf in quality and production to be more significant compared to prior release. The differences in style and slight characterization stuck out to me more than before. The presentation seemed to wafer between extensive and high quality and underwhelmingly reserved. The sheer quantity of new routes introduced here, while indicative of new blood and creativity, really does cement the concern that many routes that were started five years ago will just remain stubs. Either due to a lack of desire or an inability to find people who want to do anything more than their story.

I used to believe that there were people monitoring everything and imposing a high level of quality control over things, to make sure things are as consistent as possible. But after this update… I just find that hard to believe. There are just too many cracks. I don’t want to throw the writers under the bus, but Magic Delinquents simply should not have passed through in its current state. I don’t know how someone didn’t take umbrage with the submitted outline for The Bet— assuming you even need to submit an outline. If you don’t… oh dear. And the pace of some of these updates just concerned that the devs simply are not as engaged in the production as they used to be.

It is possible there is just some drama going on behind the scenes that I’m not privy to, that interest in the game is fading, and that there is a lack of returning old blood or new blood. I don’t know, I’m not part of the council. But I am confident that… something is happening behind the scenes, and it makes me concerned about this project’s future.

However, not all my problems have to do with the game, and a lot of them have more to do with how the game is presented and represented, particularly with the official Student Transfer website. This should be the hub for Student Transfer information, it’s where every player goes to download the game, but it has barely changed in seven years. It still contains images from Version 2 of Student Transfer. The official flowchart is not referenced on the main website, and not even in the game itself. Oh, and rather than prepping the flowchart for the game’s release, it took the dev team a day to get it ready, because they wanted to shadow drop this update, because that’s good for hype and attention! Especially when sandwiched between two massive expansions for games with tens of millions of players…

For a game with such a robust library of fan created content, the scenarios are really not given a strong presence. A sampler plate cycles out with every new release. You can find links to them and discussions on Discord and TFGamesSite forums, but you need to join to view them. The website has a list of TFGS forums and download links, but that’s about it. For content meant to elongate the life of this game, this is just a disservice. They have a website, they can host information, create pages announcing dev approved scenarios, give a structured summary of what scenario offers, and provide a better way for people to learn more about these scenarios.

Hell, they could do that with the base game, maybe help people make sense of this 1.5 million word behemoth of a visual novel by describing what each route has to offer. They could do so much to make this game known, provide so much more information than they already do, but they just choose not to. It drove me nuts to the point where I made my own dedicated page for the game five bloody years ago, and they have barely done anything since then! …Okay, aside from counting docs, utilities, download links, and scenario list updates. But is that really a point of praise?

Hell, they could have done so much more to spread this game around if they acknowledge the fact that people have been uploading clips of the game on YouTube for years, garnering tens of thousands of views. An official channel, hosting footage of this game, could have, and still can, go a long way to increase awareness of this game. Because there are people who will watch a TSF VN on YouTube but not play the game. Not everybody has a PC they use exclusively. A lot of young people, especially Americans, only got iPhones. And as storytellers who make a no-profit project like this, shouldn’t the dev team want as many people as possible to see their works?

…Okay, maybe not as many as possible, as the dev team is running a fine line by using unlicensed sprites, backgrounds, and CGs with their games. But if people are spreading the game around anyway, the dev team may as well be the ones and they may as well be doing it right. What about the erotic and nude scenes? Well, many modern NSFW games have started including SFW modes. It would be a lot of work, but then people would be able to stream and upload footage of the full game without fear of sexual puritans banning their account.

Speaking of work, who is the dev team of Student Transfer and what does each member do? This is an issue that has bothered me for a while, but really just exploded in my mind when trying to gather a loose collection of ‘credits’ to include in this review. The website has a credit’s page, but it is this garbage word orb. There’s a vague list of developers in the TFGamesSite forums. And the most formal list of credits is a pinned Discord post by Narg, listing the contributors by route, not mentioning their roles or anything.

In fact, in looking for any reference of credits on the Discord, I found a very telling conversation that just drove me up a wall. Specifically with this line, also from Narg: 

“I guess if we were to do anything it would be a list of all devs who did something for ST, but nailing down everyone’s roles would make for a very long list of assorted things.”

Oh… you mean a list of credits? Because a “very long list of assorted things” is a pretty apt way to describe credits. …When someone does something for a project of this color, they should be credited, and you know the best thing about making good credits? When you do it once, you don’t need to do them again. You can make it public, point to it when someone asks questions, and nobody needs to ask or investigate who did what on the project. Because all significant work is credited… in the credits.

I know that I’m going hard on this, but this is important, this should be acknowledged, and this would not even take that much time. One knowledgeable dev member could devote a weekend or two to reviewing the changes and get a pretty good list of who did what for each route. Not every single bloody contribution needs to be specifically credited— I excluded some minor contributions in my scattershot attempt. But anybody who did significant writing, editing, and animating should be, and it would be pretty easy to find them.

…Anything else? Right, the music. Student Transfer uses a lot of music you’ve probably heard as generic backing music in the past, but it’s a soundtrack that I consider iconic at this point, after listening to it for so many years. But they have barely added any new songs to the soundtrack. In fact, I did a quick sanity check for good measure. Going back to the 2019 release of Version 4, which was 600,000+ words, there were a total of 97 songs. Version 8, to reiterate, has 1.5 million words, and it has, not counting loopable versions of tracks, 99 songs. After adding 900,000 words of new content, the only new songs added were Wah Game Loop and Senbazuru. 

I regularly say that visual novels don’t have enough music, and while I understand wanting to have a staple of familiar tracks but… when your game gets bigger, you just need more music. And there is plenty of royalty-free music that the dev team could use. Kevin MacLeod hasn’t stopped making music in the last five years and has hundreds of tracks to choose from. And I am ‘contractually obligated’ to plug the Japanese royalty-free music company SLOS if you want something spicier. (If they’re good enough for The House in Fata Morgana devs, they’re good enough for anyone.)

Now, to end off this section, I want to stress that this is a review and I only say these things because… I love this Student Transfer. I want it to do better. I want it to be better. After seeing it triumph over the years, I really don’t want to see the quality slip and for the game to stagnate. This is me telling the devs to get up and do something, because this project is too important for them to not be proactive about preserving its presence, consistency, and quality.

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Conclusion

After going through V7 and V8, I’m not quite sure how to feel about Student Transfer. While many creators are continuing to add high-quality work, and the game, as a whole, is still a wildly impressive communal achievement, my confidence in the future of the title is at an all-time low. …Well, at its lowest since 2016, when I thought the title would just quietly die before reaching Version 2.0. Thankfully, my pessimism was disproven back then, and the game grew to a scale of quantity and quality that I still cannot fully accept. 

Only now that it has reached these highs… that I worry for the future of the project. Of what a lack of administrative maintenance, quality control, and holistically applied TLC will do to the project in the long-term. …That being said, the paratextual developmental situation is secondary next to the product that is Student Transfer, and I still view it as a deeply special game. 

Student Transfer has continued to impress me for nearly a decade, and blossomed into a genuine dream game for me. It is a platform for TSF writings that has grown and lasted well beyond my wildest expectations, and delivered a deeply impressive amount of quality stories, both in and out of the base game. I am continuously grateful to the dev team for supporting this title, and I hope that this project continues for years to come. 

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As with every release, I have also prepared flowcharts for Version 8.0 of Student Transfer. These should be applicable for any subsequent Version 8.X releases.

Edit 7/7/2024: I erroneously stated that the project was on its fourth Git page and the game’s prior edit history was just gone. I was misremembering the change in URLs as being the launching of a new Git page and I was unaware of an archived Git page called student-transfer-old. I do not use Git regularly, so I did not understand how this worked and used incorrect terminology. The relevant sentence has been removed from this review.