What is the XP3 file format?
Files with the .xp3 extension are associated with KiriKiri, a Japanese visual novel engine also known as TVP. Rather than holding scripts alone, .xp3 is the engine's packaged archive format - a binary container that bundles together all assets a game needs to run.
.xp3 archives are commonly used by popular Japanese video games, including so-called dōjin titles. With few exceptions, those games are mostly developed for Windows systems.
Files with the .xp3 extension store various data used by games built with the KiriKiri engine. They hold resources such as text blocks, images, audio tracks, and game scripts. The format resembles a ZIP archive but is engine-specific, beginning with the ASCII header XP3 (magic bytes 58 50 33 0D 0A 20 0A 1A 8B 67 01). Per-entry data may be compressed with zlib/DEFLATE. Many commercial titles encrypt or obfuscate the index with XOR-based ciphers, requiring game-aware extractors such as GARbro or KrkrExtract rather than a standard archive tool.
Security & safety
RISK: MEDIUMXP3 archives are game data, but they often come from pirated or grey-area visual-novel downloads bundled with extra executables - those bundles, not the XP3 itself, are the risk. Extraction tools (GARbro, KrkrExtract) are community projects; get them from their official GitHub repos, not mirror sites. Some titles are adult content (eroge); the format is engine-specific, not a malware vector by itself.
Format details
in a nutshell- FastStone XP3 (rare) - A few unrelated tools have used .xp3; the dominant meaning by far is the KiriKiri archive.
Programs that open XP3 files
Windows3 apps
GARbro
Open-source Open the .xp3 in GARbro to browse and extract images/audio/scripts; supports many VN archive formats.
KrkrExtract
Open-source Drop the game .exe/.xp3 onto KrkrExtract to extract or repack KiriKiri2/KiriKiriZ archives (handles some encrypted titles).
KiriKiri (TVP) SDK / krkr-xp3
Open-source Use the engine tools or krkr-xp3 to pack/unpack unencrypted XP3 archives. 
Linux1 app
GARbro (via Wine) / krkr-xp3
Open-source Run GARbro under Wine, or use the cross-platform krkr-xp3 CLI to extract/pack unencrypted archives. 
Android1 app
Kirikiroid2
Open-source A KiriKiri engine port for Android that runs the game directly from its .xp3 data. Technical details
deep spec| Container type | Binary virtual file system archive (ZIP-like packager) |
| File signature (magic bytes) | 58 50 33 0D 0A 20 0A 1A 8B 67 01 at offset 0 (ASCII "XP3" + 8 continuation bytes) |
| Byte order | Little-endian |
| Compression | Per-entry zlib/DEFLATE; entries may also be stored uncompressed |
| Encryption | Optional per-game XOR-based obfuscation of the index and/or file data; absent in many freeware titles |
| Entry filename encoding | UTF-16 (Unicode); supports Japanese and other multi-byte characters |
| MIME type | application/octet-stream |
| Typical archive size | 10 MB - several GB (bundles a full visual novel's assets) |
| Supported platforms | Windows (KiriKiri/KiriKiriZ runtime); Android (Kirikiroid2) |
| Index structure | Separate index block listing each entry's name, offset, and compressed/uncompressed sizes |
| Integrity check | Per-entry Adler-32 checksum via zlib; no whole-archive cryptographic signature |
| Engine variants | KiriKiri (original), KiriKiri2, KiriKiriZ (krkrz); commercial titles may add proprietary encryption layers |
| Typical embedded file types | KAG scenario scripts (.ks), TJS2 code (.tjs), images (PNG/BMP), audio (OGG/WAV), video |
| Developer | W.Dee / TVPSoft (TVP project) |
| Released | Early 2000s (KiriKiri / KiriKiri2 / KAG visual-novel engine, Japan) |
| Latest version | KiriKiri2 / KiriKiriZ (KAGEX); XP3 container layout stable |
| Specification | github.com |
XP3 conversions
Community Q&A
asked by usersNo questions yet - be the first to ask about XP3 files.
