Warrior Cats Game Review: Clans of the Forest, Scored

Overall: 6.2/10. Six outlets have scored Clans of the Forest since it launched on 23 October 2026, and their numbers land between 45/100 and 4/5 — an average of 6.7/10. Steam players are less generous: three days after release, the game sits at Mixed with 47% positive from 1,225 reviews, and the keyboard-and-mouse fix the studio promised on launch weekend still has not shipped.

This is a scored breakdown rather than a buying decision: what the combat actually does, where the presentation falls apart, why the story only lands for readers, and what the missing patch means for anyone starting today. If you only want the purchase call, the worth-it breakdown covers that separately.

Official source: Warrior Cats: Clans of the Forest on Steam and the official game page

Official Warrior Cats: Clans of the Forest key art via Steam.

The scorecard

These scores are an editorial aggregate of the published launch reviews plus the store's own reception data, not a fresh playthrough of every platform. Where a number rests on a single outlet, the outlet is named.

Six critics, one narrow band

A seventh outlet, The Outerhaven, published a review on 23 October without a numeric score.

There is no aggregate to point at yet. Metacritic's page for the game still shows no Metascore, only the placeholder "available after 4 critic reviews", and its tracked critic reviews number five across PC, PS5 and Switch 2. OpenCritic likewise lists the game without a published average. Anyone quoting a "critic consensus score" this week is quoting a number that does not exist.

Where the disagreement comes from

The split is not about quality control versus polish — everyone sees the same flaws. It is about what the reviewer weighs more heavily: the adaptation or the campaign. RPGamer and ScreenRant grade the game as a licensed RPG and reward the combat, the setting and the replay value of four prophecies. Gaming Trend grades the campaign structure and the presentation, finds both wanting, and lands at 45/100.

Combat: the argument nobody has

Battles are turn-based, three against three, and built on stances instead of spells — you switch your cat's posture between offensive, defensive and support roles and spend a pool of 75 moves across the party. ScreenRant scored gameplay 8/10; The Outerhaven called the system "competent and easy to understand"; even COGconnected's 77/100 review, which spends most of its word count on shallow systems, treats combat as the part that works.

The complaint is depth, not execution. With three cats and a stance swap, most encounters resolve once you find the pattern that beats the enemy formation, and the game rarely introduces a fourth variable. The full move list and stance interactions are broken down on the combat moves and stances page if you want to see how much is actually there.

Presentation: painted covers, dated polygons

ScreenRant's sub-scores are the clearest read on this: visuals 5/10, audio 7/10, story 7/10, gameplay 8/10. Its review singles out the cat designs as strange-looking and the graphics as dated in places. Gaming Trend is blunter, calling the graphics profoundly ugly.

The art direction is not the problem. Key art and environments echo the book covers closely, and the Lake Territories read as the place the books describe. The problem is the gap between that direction and the models standing in it: flat lighting on fur, stiff animation cycles, and texture work that shows its budget at close range. Occasional typos and glitches in menus were reported at launch and remain unaddressed in any public changelog.

Story: written for readers

Clans of the Forest opens on the status quo the books establish after Starlight, and it does not stop to explain clan hierarchy, naming conventions or the warrior code to anyone arriving cold. RPGamer's criticism is that the game could have done more with the plot and setting it inherited; Checkpoint's is that a large part of the story is lost on newcomers entirely.

That is a design choice rather than an accident, and for readers it pays off: Prophecy Mode runs a cat from apprentice to deputy to leader, and each of the four Clans carries its own prophecy thread, so a second campaign shows you scenes the first one skipped. For everyone else, the narrative is context you are expected to bring.

Content and replay

Four Clan routes, one prophecy each, and a customization suite that reviewers consistently rate as the strongest non-combat feature. RPGamer logged its playthrough at under 20 hours, and that figure covers one route rather than all four.

The content that fills the space between story beats is where scores sag. Quests recycle objectives, the open areas are large but rarely interactive, and side activities repeat early. Mode structure and what each campaign actually contains are laid out on the game modes page.

Steam reception: Mixed at 47%

Three days after launch, the store page reads Mixed, with 47% of 1,225 user reviews positive. That is a wider gap from the critic band than the review scores alone would suggest, and the complaints in the negative reviews cluster around the same two subjects the critics flagged: PC controls and repetition.

The Deck rating is Playable, not Verified — Steam's own note says the default configuration does not perform well, which usually means frame pacing needs manual tuning. Details on what that means in practice are on the Steam Deck support page.

The patch that has not shipped

Both statements are still readable on the Steam news hub for the game. Until a build lands, every PC verdict written this week describes an input scheme the developer has already conceded needs work — a caveat worth applying to the technical score above, which is provisional by definition.

Platform notes

• PC: full controller support and a "gamepad recommended" label on the store page; keyboard and mouse is the weak configuration at launch.
• PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S: the versions most critics did not test; no platform-specific performance data has been published. See the Xbox and PlayStation page.
• Switch and Switch 2: $29.99 on both, 1.2 GB and 2.6 GB respectively, and the Switch build carries a "behavior is consistent" note on Switch 2. Resolution and frame rate have not been documented officially — the Switch 2 page tracks what is known.

Is it worth $29.99?

For a reader who wants to walk the Lake Territories, the price is defensible: the adaptation is sincere and the combat earns its 7.5. For anyone else, the honest sequence is to wait for the input patch, then wait for a sale — a 6.2 average is a discount score, not a launch-day score. The fuller purchase argument, including edition contents, lives on the worth-it page.

Verdict

6.2/10. Clans of the Forest is a competently built turn-based RPG wearing a license it clearly loves, held back by a campaign that repeats itself, a presentation that cannot match its own art direction, and a launch input scheme the studio is still fixing. The critic band of 6.5 to 7.7 is fair. Steam's 47% is also fair — it is measuring the same problems from the couch, without the goodwill a fan brings to the first hour.

FAQ

What score did Clans of the Forest get?

Our aggregate score is 6.2/10. Published critic scores run from Gaming Trend's 45/100 to RPGamer's 4/5, with ScreenRant at 7.0/10 and COGconnected at 77/100. No Metacritic or OpenCritic average existed as of 26 October 2026.

Is the game buggy?

It runs, but launch reports describe typos, menu glitches and dated visuals, and the PC keyboard-and-mouse controls drew enough complaints that the developer posted two responses in two days. Steam rates the Deck build Playable rather than Verified.

Does it play differently on Switch 2?

Nothing official has been published on resolution or frame rate. The Switch build is listed as behaving consistently on Switch 2, and both Switch versions cost $29.99.

How long is it?

RPGamer logged under 20 hours on PC, which covers a single Clan route. Replaying the other three prophecies is where the remaining content sits.

Related Guides

• Game overview and systems
• Is Clans of the Forest worth it?
• Combat moves and stances
• Steam Deck support