KKManager: a mod, plugin and card manager for BepInEx games

A companion app for a modded BepInEx install

KKManager is a mod, plugin and card manager for games by Illusion that use BepInEx. BepInEx is the mod loading framework these games ship with, and the whole point of this tool is to sit next to that framework and manage what you have installed on top of it.

The capability list from the README is short enough to quote almost directly, and it covers the job description. It can browse installed zipmods and plugins and view information about them, automatically find and install mod updates from the internet, browse cards and scenes with drag and drop support so you can drag cards into the game to load them, install plugins and mods for you, and fix some common issues with the game.

Two of those deserve emphasis. Drag and drop of cards into the running game removes the copy-and-paste step that character and scene modding normally requires, which is the kind of friction that makes a mod collection feel like work. And the game issue fixing is the feature that separates a manager from a file browser, though the README is careful to say some common issues, not all of them.

The language is C#, the licence is GPL-3.0, and the repository layout is compact, with src/ holding the code and a LICENSE file at the root. The list of supported games lives in the source tree rather than in the README, in src/KKManager.Core/Functions/GameType.cs, which is where you look first to see whether your title is covered.

The updater is the feature that saves the most time

Automatic updates are the reason a manager like this exists. A mod list of any size becomes unmanageable by hand, because each mod has its own update cadence and its own source, and a user with a hundred mods is effectively maintaining a hundred subscriptions.

The mechanism is simple and the feedback is visible. You can turn on automatic checking for updates in the Tools menu. If there are any mod updates available, the update menu button on top turns green after a while. The update process can be observed through the log window.

That is a deliberately plain interface. There is no background service and no account system described in the README, just a menu toggle, a colour change on a button, and a log you can read. The green button is the entire status display, which is the kind of detail that either annoys you or saves you from a notification system.

The log window is more important than it looks. When an update goes wrong, and updates do go wrong, the log is what tells you whether the failure was in downloading, in extracting, or in the update server itself. The README draws that line explicitly when it says not to post issues about the update servers being slow, but do post issues related to the update process failing.

So the practical advice is to enable the check once, then read the log when something does not happen rather than assuming the manager found nothing.

Installing means extracting a zip and keeping one file

The install procedure in the README is four steps, and there is no installer to run.

First, download the latest release from the releases page. Second, extract to a new folder anywhere. Third, start KKManager.exe and create a shortcut if you want one. Fourth, if the game directory was not automatically detected, select where you installed the game.

The one wrinkle is the update path, and the README is specific about it. If you want to update your current KK Manager install, it is recommended to remove all old files except for the .settings file.

That single retained file is the user's configuration, and the two artefacts in play are therefore:

KKManager.exe
.settings

Because the tool is a portable folder rather than an installed program, the .settings file is what carries your state across versions. If you extract a fresh copy over the old one and delete it, you lose your settings, and if you keep the whole old folder you keep the old executable too. The recommended order, delete everything else, keep .settings, extract the new files, is a two minute job that most people will get wrong once.

The game directory detection is the other point of friction on a first run. If it is not found automatically, you point the app at the install location by hand, and from then on the app remembers.

Building from source means opening a solution in Visual Studio

The contributing section covers both building and translating, and the build path is the traditional one for a C# desktop application.

The README says you can clone or download the code zip, open the .sln, and hit Build > Build Solution, with Visual Studio Community 2022 recommended. No SDK version pinning, no package restore instructions, no command line recipe, just the IDE.

Build > Build Solution

The advantage of that instruction is that it also gives you the ability to build the latest version with unreleased features, which is what the sentence about building with unreleased features is for. The project lives in the IllusionMods organisation, and the contributing section says code fixes and improvements submitted as a pull request are actively merged, which is an unusually direct invitation for a game modding tool.

Translation is handled with a dedicated tool rather than by hand. The README points to resxtranslator by HakanL, and the procedure is to clone the repository, open it in the translator app, select your language, and then build and run KKManager to test the changes. Translations can go in as a pull request, or, if you do not have a GitHub account, you can zip the files and send them to ManlyMarco on the Koikatsu or IllusionSoft Discord server.

The .resx based translation model is a .NET convention, and it explains why a standalone translator application is needed rather than a set of editable text files.

Beta status, and the rules about what to report

The README is unusually candid about the state of the software. It says that while the app is already useful, it is still in beta, and that you should expect some bugs and lacking features.

That sentence belongs near the top of any evaluation, because it tells you what kind of tool you are adopting. A beta mod manager is fine when it saves you an hour a week of manual updating. It is a bad foundation for a workflow that has to be reproducible across several machines.

The reporting guidance is just as specific. Issues go to the GitHub Issues page or the Koikatu! Discord server, and the README asks for a particular shape of report: how to reproduce the issue, exactly what the effects are, what should happen instead, and as many details as possible. It also asks you to make sure there is no open issue for your bug before posting, which is a reasonable request that keeps a small issue tracker usable.

Then there is the exclusion. Please do not post issues related to the Sideloader Modpacks and the update servers being slow, but do post issues related to the update process failing. The distinction is between a service being slow, which is out of the project's hands, and the client failing, which is not.

One thing to note for anyone following the links: the issue page URL in the README points at the bbepis/KKManager repository rather than IllusionMods, which is a leftover from the project's history under a different organisation.

Licence, releases and how development is funded

KKManager is released under GPL-3.0, with a LICENSE file at the root of the repository. For a tool that many players distribute alongside their mod lists, that licence is a meaningful constraint on derived work, and the licence file is the place to read the terms rather than any summary.

The release history shows a project that ships regularly. v1.10 is dated 2026-04-10, v1.11 on 2026-06-11, and v1.12 on 2026-09-26, which is also the date of the last push to the repository. Roughly every two months, with the newest tag in step with the branch head.

Funding is handled through a Patreon page, and the homepage of the repository points at a Patreon post rather than a documentation site. The README asks for support through that page. That arrangement is common in the game modding scene, where the tools are free and the maintainers are volunteers.

The visible repository is small, with just .github/, .gitignore, LICENSE, README.md and src/. That is normal for a C# project where the bulk of the code sits in one solution directory, and it also means the build instructions in the README are genuinely all you need.

The topic tags, koikatsu, koikatsu-party, koikatu and mod-manager, tell you which games in the Illusion range are the primary audience, with automatic-updates as the feature the maintainers consider the core of the product.

Editorial conclusion

KKManager suits players of BepInEx based Illusion games who have accumulated a large mod list and spend more time updating it than playing, and it suits people who want to install plugins without hand-copying files. It does not suit you if you need a stable, feature-complete tool, since the README states plainly that it is still in beta and to expect bugs and missing features, and it does not suit a developer who wants an API, because it is a desktop application rather than a library. Check three things before you commit: that your game appears in the supported list, which the README points to as GameType.cs in the source tree, that you keep the .settings file when you replace an older install, and that the update servers are reachable, since the README explicitly says not to report slowness there. The newest release is v1.12 from 2026-09-26 and the last push to the repository was on the same date.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. IllusionMods/KKManager on GitHub
2. License: GPL-3.0
3. Project website
4. README
5. Releases