of a turn, the player can be attacked by an enemy ship or a sea creature. If they are attacked, a card minigame is triggered to decide if the player loses gold to a rival ship or cargo to a sea creature. The player and NPC draw coloured and numbered cards; the highest-numbered card wins each turn, unless presented against a powerful color. The strongest hue receives an attack bonus. The player's following turn starts after the minigame is completed. Ancient Trader does not include a saving feature, which means that all progress is lost if the game is closed. An online multiplayer mode allows for several players to simultaneously play the same map, chase the artifacts, and defeat the Guardian. The prices of the artifacts increase as other players buy them. The players can check the wealth and artifacts gained by other players. The game also includes several alternative game modes, which focus on reaching a set total wealth or cash tally before other players. The multiplayer does not include an online scoreboard. Development Ancient Trader is the first video game developed by the Slovakian studio 4Kids Games. The development team consisted of the lead designer Peter Levius, the artist Petr Vcelka, the game designer Miroslav Petrasko, and the programmer Andrej Vakrcka. The score was composed by Milan Malik, while Jan Ohajsky designed and animated the graphics. The game was developed using Microsoft XNA, a set of game development tools. According to Levius, Ancient Trader took around one year to finish; "most of our team members [...] were working hard on other higher priority projects at the same time". The game was submitted for XNA approval on 2 June 2010. Ancient Traders design was influenced by that of board games and of the video games Elite and Advance Wars. Levius and his girlfriend dedicated around two months to test and balance the game's mechanics, gathering groups of friends to play the game "without explaining anything to see if they can understand the rules and controls". He worked with Vcelka to design Ancient Traders appearance, including paper textures and clouds. He revealed that some of the maps' features came from a scan of an old military map of present-day Slovakia. According to Chris Schilling from Eurogamer, Vcelka took inspiration from sixteenth and seventeenth-century cartography, as well as from Abraham Ortelius and his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, to create "exceptionally detailed art".