old maps, ancient monsters, rich businessmans, ornamental hand drawings
Ancient Trader is the first video game developed by the Slovakian studio 4Kids Games. The development team consisted of lead designer Peter Levius, artist _nervexperiment, game designer Miroslav Petrasko, and programmer Andrej Vakrcka.The score was composed by Milan Malik, while Jan Ohajsky designed and animated the graphics. The game was developed usingMicrosoft 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 Trader 's 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 Trader 's 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".
