Kakera

Kakera is a visual novel library, launcher, and playtime tracker built with Rust and Dioxus-CLI.

Overview

Kakera works as a hub for launching and keeping track of all your visual novels. The majority of people use Steam as a central launcher for all their games, but many visual novels aren't available on Steam, and many are forced to buy from other sources which can get hard to keep track of. Kakera lets you add visual novels from VNDB, launch them, show a Discord Rich Presence, and track playtime.

Features

• Add visual novels manually or search from VNDB
• Browse visual novels in a beautiful cover-art library grid
• View and edit descriptions, notes, routes, and cover images
• Add and track active routes and completed routes
• Allows running visual novels with Wine for Linux operating systems, with settings to change locale and add custom arguments
• Track play sessions and total playtime
• Caches VN cover images locally so internet connection isn't always required to keep a nice looking library
• Shows Discord Rich Presence while a VN is running, customizable in settings
• Stores library and settings as local JSON files

Supported Platforms

Kakera currently supports:

• Linux
• Windows

macOS isn't supported just yet, as I don't have access to a Mac. But if you own a Mac and want to see it on Mac, please help out!

Installation

Windows

Download the latest installer from Releases and that's it.

All Linux Distributions

Flatpak (Recommended)

Flatpak is the recommended package for most Linux distributions. It can avoid certain issues that may be faced when trying to use the AppImage.

# Download the latest .flatpak from Releases
# Run:
flatpak install --user ./kakera_*.flatpak

flatpak run xyz.majou.Kakera

AppImage

# Download the latest .AppImage from Releases
# Run:
chmod +x kakera_*.AppImage

./kakera_*.AppImage

Arch Linux

# Kakera is available on the AUR
paru -S kakera

# Binary version
paru -S kakera-bin

NixOS

Run Kakera directly without installing it:

nix run github:enotan/kakera

Install Kakera into your user profile:

nix profile add github:enotan/kakera

NixOS Flake

Installing Kakera through your NixOS config is recommended, as it installs it as a system application with its icon and desktop entry.

Add Kakera to your flake.nix inputs:

{
    inputs.kakera.url = "github:enotan/kakera";
}

Pass the input to your NixOS modules:

outputs =
    { nixpkgs, kakera, ... }:
    {
        nixosConfigurations.nixos = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
            system = "x86_64-linux";
            specialArgs = { inherit kakera; };
            modules = [ ./configuration.nix ];
        };
    };

Then add Kakera to environment.systemPackages in configuration.nix:

{ pkgs, kakera, ... }:

{
    environment.systemPackages = [
        kakera.packages.${pkgs.stdenv.hostPlatform.system}.default
    ];
}

Building from Source

Dependencies

Arch Linux Based Systems

sudo pacman -S webkit2gtk-4.1 base-devel curl wget file openssl appmenu-gtk-module libappindicator-gtk3 librsvg xdotool xdg-utils rust cargo dioxus-cli

Debian Based Systems

sudo apt install rustc cargo libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev build-essential curl wget file libxdo-dev libssl-dev libayatana-appindicator3-dev librsvg2-dev xdg-utils lld
cargo install dioxus-cli

Fedora Based Systems

sudo dnf install webkit2gtk4.1-devel openssl-devel curl wget file libxdo-devel libappindicator-gtk3-devel librsvg2-devel xdg-utils rust cargo
cargo install --locked dioxus-cli

Optional Runtime Tools

# For running Windows visual novels on Linux
wine

# For using Proton
umu-launcher

# For Discord Rich Presence
discord # obviously. vesktop, betterdiscord, etc should all work too

Building

git clone https://github.com/enotan/kakera

cd kakera

dx build --release

Data Storage

Kakera stores data in the platform app-data directory.

On Linux systems, this is usually:

~/.local/share/kakera

On Windows, this is usually:

C:\Users\<USER>\AppData\Roaming\kakera

Planned Features

• Controller navigation mainly for handheld PCs
• Windows locale emulator support
• Fuller notes view with characters (can be imported from VNDB), rich-text formatting and editing (For all the mystery lovers like me)
• Statistics tab with graphs and visualisations of playtime
• More themes + custom theming
• Better UI overall - it's definitely improved a lot but there's still room for improvement

Tech Stack

• Rust
• Dioxus for UI
• VNDB HTTP API
• Discord Rich Presence IPC