Visual Novel Basic Guide (Linux Edition)

Above are some of the platforms that you can buy a visual novel from. Of course, there are more platforms as well, but that is where I primarily get my VN from. By the way for FANZA and DLsite some of the NSFW content is hidden, if you have IP address that is outside of Japan which mostly due to pressure from VISA and Mastercard. Therefore, to access the full catalogue of content from these sites, you will need a VPN, and you might have to buy points from FANZA or DLsite to get the content you want.

Installing/Download VN

Below are some of the common scenarios or steps that you might encounter when downloading VN.  

1. Installing VN from Steam

Steam is one of the most pain free experience you can get, just buy and click install that. Therefore, I am too lazy to demo it here. However, if you are interested in “intense content (NSFW)”, you will need to patch the game, which will be demonstrated in the later session.

2. Installing & Downloading VN from DLsite or Other platforms

Buying VN from a platform outside of Steam. You will likely encounter a split download, which means the game file is split into parts 1, 2, or however many they want. Below are some of the steps. However, you can’t use the exe from part 1 to piece all part of the file together without the help from windows, and I personally find it much easier to extract the file in a windows virtual machine with file pass through. But I won’t cover how to setup virtual machine here as there are way too many tutorials online.

Step 1: Download all parts of the file from the platform

Step 2: Extract the file with the part 1.exe file

Step 3: Enjoy

Just realize the Steam version of VN doesn’t have an NSFW scene. I got you covered (✿˶’◡˘)♡. This can be solved by patching the game. Patching means a separate file that the publisher provided to unlock “those” content. But in Linux life will get a bit harder, as sometimes the developer do give path file to you, and sometimes the patch are given in exe file which you know you can’t use it in Linux. However, I found some unconventional method such as extracting the exe file. Below is a demo on how.

Note: Extracting the exe file may not work all the time. 😅

Step 1: Download PeaZip from the store 

Note: You can get PeaZip from the store in SteamOS, Fedora, Bazzite but I don’t know about other distro

Step 2: Find the patch exe and extract

Step 3: Put the extracted file to game folder

SteamOS: In desktop mode -> Open discover store -> search Lutris click install

Fedora: Open terminal and type the command

Step 1: Open the add games panel

Step 2: Set up the game info

Note: exe file type is used for Windows 

Step 3: Set up game options

Note: wine prefix is like simulating a Windows file system in Linux

Step 4: Set up runner options 

Step 5: enable gamescope (optional)

Note: Gamescope is more like forcing a VN in window mode to go to full screen. However, it is recommended you disable it if you want to use Luna translator while reading VN, as the translator windows won’t stay on top of the VN in full-screen mode.

Step 6: Change system Locale to Japanese

Note: If you don’t want to repeat some of these steps every single time you add a game. You can change the default setting for all games using wine shown below.

Step 7: Done