Guide to using VNDS interpreter to play Visual Novels on your phone/tablet

It’s a great app that works surprisingly well. The only major downside to this app is that the developer didn’t include a readme or any basic instructions. This has resulted in some 1 star ratings and general confusion according to the reviews on the google play store, so I’m going to write a simple step by step walkthrough to hopefully clear up some of that confusion.

First of all, this app is not a Visual novel in itself. It is an app that allows you to play VNs that you have on your PC, on your phone or tablet. So you have to have the games installed on your computer already. I’ll try to explain this as simply as possible.

1. Download the app (linking to the lite version simply because if you’re reading this, you likely wanna try it before spending any money on it. I recommend the full version if you’re serious about playing VNs on your phone. The lite version doesn’t allow you to save.)

2. Go here and see if your Visual novel is on the list of converters. If it’s not on the list, then you’re out of luck. Unfortunately, VNDS will not work properly until you convert the game files for VNDS to read, and the number of games that are available to convert are relatively small at the moment. Download the converter for the game you want. Choose the most recent version(higher number), or the one on the top of that game’s list.

Choose the converter for your game

Note: these are not downloads for the game. They simply repackage the files in a way that the app can read it.

3. You should already have the Visual novel installed on your computer. If you don’t have it, then download it. I shouldn’t have to tell you how to find things on google. Though I’m not encouraging you to pirate it. I actually paid for all the VNs I’m playing(crazy, right?). But if the game you’re looking for isn’t available in your native language, then do what you must.

4. Extract the converter and run the exe file(the one with the picture).

Run the converter

The only things you’ll have to change are the file paths, and the resolution you want your game to be in. So for game folder, direct it to where you have the game installed on your computer. Output folder wherever you want(I put it on my desktop before moving it to my phone). For target platform, match up the resolution as closely to what the resolution on your device is(aspect ratio doesn’t matter too much, it’ll just fit to screen anyway). You can leave all the other settings as is.

Most can be left default

5. Click Start and go do something else. It’ll take an hour or longer to convert the game files. He’s not kidding about it taking a long time.

This is what the output files should look like

6. Once everything’s converted, you can move the new folder onto your phone. You can pretty much put it in any directory you want but for the sake of uniformity, I put it in the same general directory the default search paths are in e.g. /mnt/extSdCard/vnds/novels/

Doesn’t really matter where you put it. Just have to set the path later.

Note that it is case sensitive. Depending on the way your device lists the external card, you will probably have to click on settings in the app and select Novel Search Path to input your own path. For me, extSdCard was the name of the directory for my microsd so I had to enter it exactly like that for it to find it.

Use your menu button to access Novel Search Path

Set the path to wherever you put the files

7. The game should show up once you click refresh. Click the icon for the game you want to play and enjoy~!

Enjoy!

If you have further problems, feel free to ask questions in the comments below. But if it’s a serious technical problem, I’d direct your question to anonl, the developer.

EDIT: Added images to hopefully help. Used Higurashi as example.