"A Leaf in the Wind"

Hello, fine folk!

First of all, I’m a total newbie to UE4, coming mainly from an artist background, so please let me know if i should be posting somewhere else.
Following my own little game-a-week schedule, following up on last weeks 2D platformer, which went pretty well.

My case is this:

I would like to make a game featuring a single falling leaf, swept off by wind torrents when running into them, and ultimately being controlled by a mouse control
producing the players own wind torrent, sort of like this:

https://forums.unrealengine.com/filedata/fetch?filedataid=119708&type=thumb

Anybody have a good idea of how i should get the basics of this to work? Ive tried both from a sidescroll preset(which leads me at a loss with mouse control) and top down (which gets me into trouble of moving anything at all when i tilt it vertically) Ive been scouring tutorials but can’t seem to find much relevant to the problem, so any point in any direction is appreciated.
Also, if I’m in over my head, just say it!

Thanks!