Ancient Trader HD

The mysterious lull of Eastern flutes, the gentle sound of wind wrapping around creaking timber, the slow revealing of a dusty old map: the Xbox and indie PC port Ancient Trader HD is nothing if not evocative.

A turn-based strategy game that sees you as one of a number of captains all out to take down the Ancient Guardian (a really big fish, if you want to get basic), Lost Bytes's title is a mixture of trading, rock-paper-scissors, and a race for the finish line.

There’s the making of something special here, but Ancient Trader HD is in desperate need of upgrades if it’s to become a leviathan on its new platform.

You can pick from a selection of pre-made maps to begin your adventure, or you can choose to randomly create a world that falls into three different difficulty levels.

From there, you select and name your trusty captain, and are plonked down in the map-like world on a quest for treasure, trade, and the aforementioned big fish.

Strong first impressions don’t count for everything in a game, but they certainly do no harm either, and Ancient Trader HD makes as good an early impression as any recent title.

With graphics designed to look like fading parchment, a map that echoes those of the early traders of the 15th-16th century (complete with sea monsters that are actually sea monsters), and fog that peels back like paper, it’s fantastic to look at.

So, heave away, me hearties

Movement around the map is determined by your sails’ quality, which, along with your three different weapons and cargo hold, can be upgraded at the ports that litter the ocean. Money, on the other hand, is gained through buying low and selling high, picking up chests, or beating up on monsters and other players.

Combat plays out like a slightly more complicated version of rock-paper-scissors, with each of the three weapons given a coloured card and a level depending on how many upgrades you’ve bought. If you play a weapon that is higher in level than the enemy’s, you destroy its card.

Should you play a coloured card that is naturally strong against the other (a paper to rock situation), then you get a level boost of 2.

It’s a nice idea, but it doesn’t really work very well in practice. Because the respective card is removed from your hand when you lose a fight, whoever takes the hit on the first round is almost certainly going to lose the battle.

Likewise, going up against someone with a weapon 3 levels higher than you results in a guaranteed loss, since even the corresponding ‘strong’ weapon won’t have enough power to beat it.

But the combat isn’t the weakest part of Ancient Trader HD.

No, that dishonour is reserved for the braindead AI that can’t seem to work out how to get from one side of the map to another, let alone compete against the player for the artifacts needed to summon the Ancient Guardian.

With no decent competition, all of Ancient Trader HD’s successes become meaningless, as the gameplay descends into mundane repetitiveness and inevitable victory.

You could try the pass-the-iPad multiplayer mode for up to four people to avoid rubbing shoulders with the bot captains, but as games usually last 30-50 turns, it’s too slow sailing for more than two.

This is a title that cries out for online competition and asynchronous multiplayer: ELO ratings or just Game Center match-ups with friends. As it stands, the hull of the ship has been built in the shape of an attractive and tense tactical boardgame, but it has no crew to man it.