Launch Meow!

You play as the Cat Commander, taking charge of the fifth lunar landing test launch of the Feline Space Agency – the first four attempts all ended in "fireworks," but the secretary insists, "This time it will definitely be a meow-success!" "Launch Meow" breaks the entire process into three interconnected stages: in the rocket assembly area, you select the nose cone, main body, and tail section using physical panels/holographic images; different colors correspond to cat personalities such as Dreamer, Reckless, Steady, Creative, and Rhythmic, affecting performance and outcome; in the cat lounge, you choose two cats from 16 MBTI cats to form the lunar landing team, with different personalities triggering different plot points; finally, at the control console, you adjust thrust, fuel, and stability, then ignite after the countdown – success means planting a flag on the moon, failure records the "final flight log" prompting the player to review. As an engineer, I used Unreal Engine blueprints to build the system framework for this three-phase cycle. The GameManager manages stage enumeration, workstation events, and input context, forwarding everything to the rocket assembly station (WholeRocket), cat selection (CatSystem), and parameter adjustment console (Tools). The DialogueSystem + DataTable allows the dialogue/performance parameters of the 16 cats to be data-driven, with the UI (WBP_Dialogue) only handling rendering and input locking. Enhanced Input (IMC_Launch, IA_*) allows for seamless switching between exploration, UI, and parameter adjustment controls; Recast NavMesh parameters are uniformly optimized in DefaultEngine.ini to ensure automatic cat movement. Through these blueprint pipelines, I built an extensible "build-crew-launch" experience within 48 hours of the jam, allowing designers/artists to iterate independently while ensuring system decoupling and ease of debugging.

Tools: Unreal, Blueprints

Position: Lead Gameplay Engineer