Warrior Cats: Clans of the Forest: the saga with tens of millions of readers finally gets a game

There are licences everybody has heard of without ever touching, and then there is Warrior Cats.

A series of animal novels running for over twenty years, dozens of volumes deep, which turned an entire generation of readers into people who can recite the hierarchy of a wild cat clan from memory.

And until now, almost no official game.

Out on 23 October, at 29.99 euros. No score today.

What you do

An action-adventure game set in the Lake Territories, the setting of the second major novel series.

You embark on quests to gain favour with your Clan, you battle others in turn-based combat, and you learn new moves to take down your rivals. Enemies range from mice and squirrels to badgers, which for anyone who knows the series is no small thing: a badger, in these books, is an event.

You forage for materials to craft items in your den. You climb trees, pounce through undergrowth, track scents, solve environmental puzzles.

And you create your own cat, with an editor the pre-order edition promises to expand.

The locations, and this is where readers will judge

The game announces the four iconic territories: ThunderClan's dense forests, RiverClan's marshlands, ShadowClan's dark pine swamps, and WindClan's open moors.

Plus the Moonpool and the Island, the two sacred places.

For readers, that list is the real selling point. These are places they have carried in their heads since adolescence, described across thousands of pages, and never seen.

And it is also the real risk. When an audience has imagined a place for fifteen years, showing it is a formidable exercise.

What I am watching

The turn-based combat. That is an unexpected choice and I find it a smart one: a real-time action game with cats would have demanded technology this budget probably does not allow, whereas a turn-based system leaves room for writing and tactics.

Whether it has depth remains open. Learning new moves is announced, but nothing yet says whether a fight is a decision or a formality.

The target audience. Thirty euros, a cat creator, quests and crafting: the game is clearly aimed at readers rather than seasoned players. That is not a criticism, it is information. If you have never read these books, you will see a decent adventure game. If you have, you will see the Moonpool.

And fidelity. That is everything. A licence like this is won or lost on details of hierarchy, vocabulary and ritual. The readers know them better than the developers.

What strikes me is how long it took.

Twenty years of novels, an enormous and loyal audience, a fully built universe with factions, places and codes. Every condition has been in place for a long time, and almost nothing happened.

Very large video game licences come from cinema, comics or other games. The ones that come from teenage literature stay rare, which is a shame, because those are audiences who know their universe by heart.

We will come back with a score once readers have seen their territories.

Have you read Warrior Cats? Confess your Clan on the InsertCoins Discord, we will barely judge.