Catch It! brings a progression-driven fishing adventure to Fortnite

Catch It! is a progression-driven fishing adventure built in Fortnite where players can catch hundreds of fish, discover rare mutations, upgrade their gear, grow their collections, and explore five islands filled with secrets and opportunities.

Created by Epic MegaGrants recipient CatchItFN, the experience combines persistent progression, dynamic UI, custom visual effects, fish upgrading and fusion, and daily and weekly events to create a fishing experience designed to keep evolving.

Here’s a look at how the team used UEFN systems including Verse, Scene Graph, Niagara, and more to keep it reel on Catch It!.

Building a fishing experience around progression

From the beginning, the CatchItFN team wanted fishing to feel like part of a much larger adventure.

“Our goal with Catch It! was to create a fishing experience that feels alive and full of progression,” says the team. “Players explore five different islands, each with its own secrets and opportunities, while discovering hundreds of fish with unique mutations and rarities.”

This focus on progression extends far beyond what players pull out of the water. As they play, they can unlock new fishing rods, upgrade their gear, manage an expanding inventory, and steadily build their collection.

Securing an Epic MegaGrant also gave the team encouragement to keep pushing the concept further.

“Receiving Epic MegaGrants support feels like a strong validation of our direction,” the team says. “It reinforces that Fortnite and UEFN are spaces where innovative concepts, including experiences outside the traditional shooter genre, can thrive.”

Using Verse Persistence, the team implemented a persistent inventory system that saves player unlocks and upgrades across sessions. Instead of starting over each time they enter the experience, players can continue building on the collection and gear they have already earned.

UEFN also gave the developers room to customize how that progression looks and feels. “We customized fishing rods visually by attaching custom Niagara effects directly to the player, enabling each rod to have unique visuals and feedback while keeping the system modular and scalable,” says the team.

Turning fish into a deeper collection system

There’s more to Catch It! than hooking a lunker. Players can feed, merge, level up, and fuse their fish, adding another layer of progression to the collection experience.

Behind those mechanics is a structured data model. Each fish references a unique index connected to constant information such as its name and base properties. Individual fish can then store attributes including weight and star level, which help determine their upgrade potential.

The team paired this system with Verse UI to create a dynamic interface that updates in real time. Players can manage their collections, inspect their fish, perform upgrades, and fuse fish through an interface that responds as the underlying data changes. The result turns a collection of catches into an evolving progression system.

Making live events scalable with Scene Graph

Catch It! is also designed to give players reasons to come back and discover new content and gameplay.

“A big part of the experience comes from our event system,” says the team. “Daily and weekly live events introduce new challenges, rare fish, and unique moments that encourage players to return and see what is happening across the islands.”

Building enough variation to keep those events fresh could have required a significant number of additional assets and manual configurations. The team instead used Scene Graph to dynamically create mutated variations of existing fish.

By modifying Niagara parameters directly through Verse, the developers created a fishing event system capable of changing visuals and behavior at runtime. Rather than duplicating assets for every possible variation, the system can generate different mutations dynamically.

“Without Scene Graph, implementing these variations would have required significantly more assets and manual setup, making the system far less scalable,” says the team.

An adventure built to keep growing

Catch It! is a great example of how systems available in UEFN can be combined to build experiences that extend well beyond a single gameplay mechanic.

Verse Persistence enables progression carry across sessions. Verse UI turns complex collection data into an interactive player experience. Niagara gives equipment and fish distinctive visual feedback. And Scene Graph helps the team generate dynamic variations without multiplying the amount of content that needs to be created manually.

Together, those systems support an experience where catching a fish can be the beginning of a much longer progression loop.

Ready to cast? https://www.fortnite.com/@catchit/0278-2596-0076