How to play/use Koikatsu & KKManager on Linux

Guide on how to play & use Koikatsu/KKManager on Linux

Start & End

This Guide assumes you know how to use, search & download things especially when you are using Linux anyway.

So first how to play it:

Right Click, configure and force proton compatibility Layer to Preferable latest Official/Experimental version or even better using Proton-GE. Now the "base" game should work. But we obviously want to use the HF Patch at minimum.

To install the HF Patch simply right click and open with wine. Or terminal and wine *hf setup.exe*. And just point it to the correct installation destination. Which in most cases would be /home/USERNAME/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Koikatsu Party/ .

But to get mods and so working you have to Right Click again , configure and add these launch options: WINEDLLOVERRIDES="winhttp=n,b" %command%

Now the game + HF patch or rather mods are working fine. But we also want to use the KKManager to update mods, to do that open a terminal and do:

[You have to install wine, to do so just search online for the glorious eggroll post for "how to get out of wine dependency hell" and follow the steps needed for your specific distro of choice.]

winetricks corefonts
winecfg
Inside of winecfg add application and point it to KKManager.exe then go to libraries and add winhttp Native , Builtin and close winecfg then proceed with the following:
winetricks dotnet472
This should install 4.0 and 4.5 if i'm not mistaken but probably gonna stop working at 4.6 and onwards [IF it should install just fine though you are done and can ignore the rest of this guide and just open KKManager and update your mods.] Just force quit the command with ctrl+c and enter this next command:
winetricks dotnet35

But we are not done since KKManager needs 4.6.2 to do that we need to install it manually first open a terminal again and enter the following command:
winetricks win7

After that go to the official Microsoft page and download .NET Framework 4.6 & 4.6.2 offline installer.

Open a terminal again and do the following commands:
wine *net 4.6 setup.exe* /q
Then wait till its seemingly done and then do:
wine *net 4.6.2 setup.exe* /q

Afterwards if nothing went wrong KKManager should now open up and you can update your mods.

[KingKrouch]

You can save on a bunch of time by entering this command into the terminal "protontricks 1073440 dotnet472 dotnet35 corefonts" (or "flatpak run com.github.Matoking.protontricks 1073440 dotnet472 dotnet35 corefonts" on the Steam Deck).

[Blue]

Disclaimer** I am not a developer nor do I know much about wine or windows** If anyone is struggling with getting mods to load after applying the hf patch check and see if you have BepInEx as a modloader. (All you do is go into your install folder and check for a folder by that name). I ran into an issue where the patch was applied but none of the mods loaded because the BepInEx mod loader wasn't loading up properly. (Thanks mainly to it relying on Windows to use an obsecure rule that the Linux proton launcher dosen't). To fix this simply install protontricks (or winetricks ig) and follow the guide posted by the BepInEx developers (https://docs.bepinex.dev/articles/advanced/proton_wine.html#2-configure-proxy-to-run) . What I will say is after following this guide (keep protontricks open after applying the change once to make sure and then close it after you verify it works) that graphic acceleration is active but it takes ages to load at times. Hope this helps anyone else struggling.

[WinterSouls]

Ok, thanks. It turns out that yes, this does work along with dlcs but I guess something went wrong during the file transfer of my previous attempt that broke the game.

[TimeFreeze]

If you add the game as a non-steam game, it should work. Though it should be noted that Koikatsu does not have controller support. So unless you install a mod which adds support you probably cant play it on the Deck.

[WinterSouls]

Will this work on the non-steam version of the game and on steam deck as well? I'm in the process of transferring stuff over to my steam deck so I can't do the steps yet. It would be helpful if you could answer my questions. Thanks.