White Cat Project (Japanese: 白猫プロジェクト, Hepburn: Shironeko Purojekuto) is a free-to-play action role-playing game developed and published by Colopl for Android and iOS.
An English version was released internationally under the title Colopl Rune Story and operated from July 23, 2015, to October 7, 2016.
[6] Upon their adventures towards finding the Runes, both the hero and Iris start to fill the pieces, meeting friends and enemies and discovering their true identities.
There is also a town-building mode where players can build and upgrade structures that generate in-game currencies and provide combat bonuses to their characters.
[11] A new action RPG tentatively named Shironeko New Project is announced for the Nintendo Switch, originally slated for release in 2020 in Japan.
[12][3] In January 2018, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against Colopl over five patent infringements found in White Cat Project.
[13] Nintendo later added a sixth patent infringement to the proceedings,[14] and seeks 4.4 billion yen in damages plus late fees, in addition to an injunction on the operation of the White Cat Project smartphone app.
[19] It was animated by Project No.9, with Masato Jinbo directing and writing the series, Yousuke Okuda designing the characters, and Taku Iwasaki composing the music.
[24] On July 18, 2014, White Cat Project reached the top of Google Play Japan's ranking of newly-released free apps, four days after release on Android.
While Colopl initially defended itself in the lawsuit, the company announced in August 2021 that they agreed to settle with Nintendo for ¥3.3 billion (approximately US$30 million) as to "resolve the matter as soon as possible".