Display Issues

Symptom: Game menus are broken, text boxes are not rendered properly, UI elements overlap, or the layout looks wrong.

Cause: Most Ren’Py games are developed for PC and their screen layouts only target desktop device variants. When the game detects a mobile or small-screen device, it may try to use a layout that doesn’t exist or isn’t designed correctly, resulting in broken UI.

Solution — Override Device Variants:

The best fix is to use custom device variants to make the game render as if it’s running on a PC or large-screen device. You can set variants in three places:

1. Game Settings — Long-press a game, go to Ren’Py Settings > Override Device Variant, and select variants like pc and large
2. In-Game Overlay — Open the overlay during gameplay, tap the Device Variant Switcher, select your variants, and apply. You can also save the selection to the game’s configuration from here.
3. Global Settings — Go to Settings > Ren’Py Engine > Override Device Variant to set default variants for all games

Symptom: The game doesn’t fit the screen properly.

Solutions:

1. Change screen rotation — Go to Game Settings and adjust the rotation:

   • Try Landscape for most visual novels
   • Try All to let the game choose
   • Try Portrait for games designed for vertical play

2. Override device variant — The game may be rendering for a screen aspect ratio it doesn’t support. Try pc or tablet variants as described above.

Symptom: Game launches but shows a black screen.

Solutions:

1. Wait 10-15 seconds — some games have long initial loads
2. Tap the screen — the game may be waiting for input
3. Try the Menu button — For some older games, pressing the Menu button (escape) on the Quick Menu can trigger the game to load to its main menu. This is a rare known issue that has only been observed with a couple of games.
4. Try a different engine version
5. Check the Log Viewer for errors

Solutions:

1. Override device variant — Using the pc variant often gives properly sized text
2. Use the Text Size Scaling slider in the in-game overlay’s formatting window (range 0.5x to 1.5x)
3. Some games have built-in text size options in their preferences menu