Taktari

Overview

Self-Initiated Project

Taktari is an auto-battler roguelike developed independently in Unity. The game pairs an African-fantasy visual direction with a cast centered primarily on African American characters, including a deliberate range of hairstyles, silhouettes, personalities, and elemental identities. Nearly 50 playable characters and enemies are built around seven elements, individual stat profiles, and a strength-and-weakness system in which every element counters three others and is vulnerable to three. Dual-element bosses layer those relationships together to create more demanding encounters.

Challenge

As my first video game, Taktari required me to move well beyond visual design and learn programming, systems design, balancing, interface development, and game production at the same time. Working solo also created a constant risk of expanding the scope faster than I could manage it, making a clear playable core and disciplined development priorities essential.

Solution

I set one primary milestone: make the game fully playable and varied enough that repeated runs would not feel identical. Once the core battle loop, elemental relationships, and scaling difficulty were working, I expanded the experience with additional characters, enemies, banners, and badges that introduce special effects and new strategic combinations. The endless structure increases difficulty as players advance, while the growing pool of cards and upgrades makes each run develop differently. I created the complete visual system—from the logo, interface, character artwork, and gameplay assets to promotional and merchandise applications—with image generation used as a concept-development aid for selected character ideas.

Services provided

Game Branding, Logo Design, Character Design, Vector Illustration, Art Direction, UI Design, Game Interface Design, Gameplay Systems, Unity Development, Promotional Graphics, Apparel Graphics