Official WARRIOR CATS video game announced; CLANS OF THE FOREST arrives this "leaf-fall"

Ollie Kaplan
5 days ago
4 min read

For the first time in the franchise's 23-year cat-story, the Warrior Cats clans are getting their very own official video game. The franchise — which currently spans over 100 books and will soon be arriving on the small screen with an animated TV series — announced its first official video game entry, Clans of the Forest, a turn-based RPG inspired by the fan-favorite feline-centered fantasy novels, Warrior Cats by Erin Hunter (who's actually the nom-de-plume of the two main writers Kate Cary and Cherith Baldry, franchise visionary Victoria Holmes, and editor Tui T. Sutherland), published by HarperCollins. As of this article's initial publication date in early August 2026, no firm release date for the Warriors RPG has been announced; instead, the release window is currently set for this "leaf-fall" on PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2.

The turn-based RPG is being developed by Trailmark Games in collaboration with the Coolabi Group, a London-based media company that owns the rights to the Warriors franchise. Players will be able to choose between four distinct storylines, one for each of the four warrior cat clans (ThunderClan, RiverClan, ShadowClan, and WindClan), shaped by each Clan's unique culture, history, and traditions, and gameplay starts with the player as an apprentice navigating a Clan under the strain of a new prophecy.

The official logline for the Warrior Cats RPG reads:

"Train as an apprentice in a Clan struggling under the weight of a new prophecy – explore iconic locations from the Warrior Cats series; hone your skills in battle as you defend your borders and hunt to feed your Clan; meet beloved characters from the books; design your own unique cat; and follow the destiny StarClan has laid out for you."

Beyond the main narrative, the game promises the kind of world-building fans have wanted from an official title for years: exploring iconic locations pulled straight from the books, battling to defend Clan borders, hunting to keep the Clan fed, and crossing paths with familiar characters. Players can also design their own original cat rather than being locked into a preset protagonist.

In addition to the Clans of the Forest teaser, the Warrior Cats RPG video game announcement also offered fans a first look at the game's cover art, as well as a glimpse at what gameplay will look like. The primary key art depicts a customizable player character — though, as the official PR notes, "you can design your own to look however you want" — set against a backdrop that depicts Tawnypelt and Brightheart mid-battle, while the other teaser illustration groups together Brightheart, Tawnypelt, Tallstar, and Ivypool, an iconic lineup that spans multiple Warriors Cats generations and hints at just how far back the game's roster may reach.

Fans have been asking for a Warrior Cats video game for nearly two decades, and, in the absence of one, they simply made their own. Community-built titles like Warrior Cats: The Next Generation, an RPG Maker project by G Wolf Studios, and Warrior Cats: Untold Tales, a sandbox roleplaying game by a solo developer known as Falcon_Star, have circulated in the fandom since the early 2010s, letting players raise a cat from kit to leader long before any studio confirmed similar plans. The most successful of these efforts, Warrior Cats: Ultimate Edition, launched on Roblox in 2019 as an unofficial fan project before Coolabi itself got involved in its production — turning a grassroots roleplay game into something close to an official title in its own right, and one that reportedly still draws around 10,000 players a day. That track record of fan-led development is a large part of why Clans of the Forest is being read as less of a surprise than a long-overdue formalization of what the community was already building.

Warrior Cats: A franchise on the move

This week's announcement revealing the upcoming release of the Warrior Cats role-playing game, Clans of the Forest, arrives in the middle of the biggest expansion the franchise has ever seen since its launch 23-years ago with Hunter's debut Warriors novel in 2003. Since its debut, the Warrior Cats saga has chronicled the adventures of the iconic orange tabby, Rusty/Firestar, as well as the major wild cat Clans of the forest, across more than 100 titles, selling upward of 90 million copies worldwide and reaching readers in 38 languages, per The Hollywood Reporter.

That print legacy runs on two tracks. The core novels — written under the collective pen name Erin Hunter by a rotating team of authors — follow the Clans across six numbered arcs, from The Prophecies Begin through the more recent A Vision of Shadows and beyond, alongside dozens of standalone Super Editions and novellas. Running parallel to it is a growing library of illustrated adaptations: a full-color graphic novel retelling of The Prophecies Begin, illustrated by married duo Natalie Riess and Sara Goetter, has been rolling out arc by arc since 2024, while a separate line of original manga-style graphic novels — including the Graystripe's Adventure, Tigerstar and Sasha, and Ravenpaw's Path trilogies — has told entirely new stories set between the novels since 2008. Together, the two formats have given readers who grew up on the books, and newer fans who found the series through comics, a shared entry point into the same world the upcoming game and animated series now draw from.

The bigger headline (at least re: the Warrior Cats franchise expansion) was announced earlier this summer, in June 2026, when Coolabi Group and Disney Kids & Family confirmed a deal to adapt the series into an animated show for Disney+ and Disney Channel — the property's first authorized television adaptation. Showrunner A.C. Bradley (Ms. Marvel, What If?) and director Rodrigo Blaas (The Incredibles, WALL-E) are attached, with animation studio Original Force producing. The series is set to debut in 2028.

That momentum shows up in the numbers, too: the franchise's official fan community draws more than 2 million annual site visitors, 50 million monthly YouTube views from fan-created content, and nearly 3 billion TikTok views, while an unofficial, fan-built Warrior Cats experience on Roblox has already been played over 735 million times — a strong signal for why an official video game felt inevitable.

Check out the gallery of gameplay images below: