Cosmic Cat Game Jam Post-Mortem – “20 Seconds of Chaos”

Cosmic Cat Game Jam Post-Mortem – “20 Seconds of Chaos”

aka: How I fought Unreal Engine, meteors, and my own ambition in a single weekend

This weekend I participated in a game jam and decided, for absolutely unexplainable reasons, that I could build a full micro-game in Unreal Engine in 20 seconds of gameplay and 0 seconds of sanity. The result? Cosmic Cat: 20-Second Sprint — a tiny slice of cosmic chaos starring Cheeky the space cat, whose only job is to grab as many fish as she can before getting vaporized by falling meteors. Same, girl. Same.

Let me tell you about the boss fights I encountered along the way:

🥊 BOSS BATTLE 1: Asset Chaos

I enthusiastically imported my entire cosmic aesthetic into the engine… Only for Unreal to politely (rudely) inform me that my textures were the size of a small moon. Cue me bulk-editing half my project so my PC didn’t catch on fire. Victory: ✨ Barely.

🥊 BOSS BATTLE 2: The Timer That Would Not Timer

I set up a simple 20-second countdown… which immediately refused to update on screen, refused to reset, and occasionally refused to exist at all. After wrestling with bindings, casts, and UMG logic, I finally got it working. 

 Did I feel powerful? Yes. 

 Did I also feel like the timer personally hated me? Also yes.

🥊 BOSS BATTLE 3: Packaging — The Final Boss

Nothing humbles a dev faster than clicking Package Project and watching Unreal throw an error that essentially says:

“Idk fam. Something broke.” Turned out I had chunk install enabled (?? why?? who did that?? ME??), and the engine was like, “Absolutely not.” Once I disabled that cursed setting, the build finally cooked.

Victory music played. Cosmic Cat lived. I lived.

🥊 BOSS BATTLE 4: Scope Creep

Did I try to add too much? 

 Yes. 

 Did the falling meteor system nearly take me out emotionally? 

 Also yes. 

 Did I cut features like a responsible adult? 

 Absolutely not. I added more fish.

🐱💜 THE GOOD NEWS:

Against all odds, I finished a working game that’s actually cute, silly, and fun. In the process, I leveled up in:

• UMG UI creation
• Blueprint chaos management
• Texture optimization
• Error log deciphering (crying)
• Game jam resilience
• And, most importantly, knowing when to laugh at myself

Game jams are wild. You learn fast, fail fast, fix fast, and somehow walk away thinking, “I could totally do another one.” (And I will. Because apparently I thrive in chaos.)

If you want to play it or roast my meteor logic, I’m always here for feedback. Cheeky Dev Sam out. 🐾🚀✨