This is a tutorial for anyone wanting to play Ren'py games on a platform that the author didn't compile the game for. In particular, I want to play on Linux for Nintendo Switch, an ARM device that nobody compiles for.

This might also work for running Windows-only games on Linux, but I haven't tried it yet. Let me know if it works and I'll update the guide!

1. Download the game and extract it. In my case I downloaded the Linux x86_64 version of Butterfly Æffect.
2. Open the game/script-version.txt file. This tells you which version of Ren'py the game was built for. In my case, the file says (8, 3, 7).
3. Go to the Ren'py release list and click that version.
4. Just below the download buttons at the top, click Download ARM Linux (Raspberry Pi and Chromebook) SDK tar.bz2
5. Extract the Ren'py download. (It's faster to extract the whole thing because it's a .tar.bz2, where extracting partial files is very, very slow.)
6. Delete the following items from the game folder:
   • renpy
   • lib/python*
7. Copy the following items from the Ren'py folder into the same relative location in the game folder:
   • renpy.sh (overwrite if needed)
   • renpy.py (overwrite if needed)
   • renpy (the subfolder)
   • lib/python* (version depends on what you downloaded)
   • lib/py3-YOUR-PLATFORM (check uname -m if you don't know your platform)

If playing on Switch, you probably want to swap the A/B and X/Y buttons to the more familiar Nintendo button layout. If you can't do this in your controller software, you can modify the keymap file that the game uses. Edit renpy/common/00keymap.rpy and search for pad_y_press, you can swap a/b and x/y in this section to swap the button meanings.

Or, download my own 00keymap.rpy file and overwrite it. I personalised mine to be like other visual novels I'm used to.

Hope this helped! Obviously I can't test it on every visual novel, but it seems to have worked for me. Contact me if you have corrections.