Posted October 26, 2025 by FreefDev
Hey there, developer!
As I wrote in the other post, porting an RPG Maker MZ game to Linux is surprisingly easy. I don’t know why they don’t support this option by default, but my best guess is that since Linux file paths are case sensitive, it could break plugins that would work otherwise. In the case of my game, everything is properly pathed, and there were no issues in my playtest.
So, how to port it? RPG Maker MZ games are based on HTML and JavaScript. This works great for online games. However, when you wish to run it locally, you’ll need to make it a proper local application (or meddle with the security of your browser). This is why MZ employs NW.js. Long story short, it allows to run HTML/JavaScript as a separate program, like a pseudo-browser.
Luckily, it supports Linux. You can get a runtime on their website. Since most computers use the better performing 64-bit system I recommend getting that one. Then, you extract your newly downloaded folder. The file “nw” is the executable, which you should already be able to run for a generic splash screen.
Next, in RPG Maker, export your game to HTML, but configure it as if you’re doing it for normal desktop. In my case, I don’t use the Fullscreen plugin for the web HTML export, but here I enable it. Then, you drag all the contents of your export into your new NodeJS environment folder.
When you start nw, it should load the index.html and eventually your game runs just like it would on Windows. Done!
Finally, I recommend renaming nw to something more obvious like “Play [game title]”. At this time, I don’t know of a way to make a local shortcut with custom icon. Also, when you package the game, I recommend doing it on Linux and using the .tar.gz filesystem. This will make sure to retain any specific file permissions.
I’ve also seen some GitHub projects that promise to automize this further, but they are currently more complicated than this method or come with unwished extra functions. Maybe that’ll change soon. Anyway, hope this helped you and (help your fans) have fun!