Cultures is a real-time strategy and city-building game in which players manage the historical Vinland settlements of the Vikings.

This includes constructing roads, handling the settlement's economy and training citizens in jobs such as blacksmithing.

[5] John Lee of NextGen said of the game, "The gameplay may be plentiful, but Viking reputations will suffer.

"[13] As a city-building title, the PC version is part of a genre that tended to see success in European countries but "never seems to catch on in the States", GameSpot's Bruce Geryk wrote in 2001.

[2] Retailers pre-purchased 140,000 units of the game in preparation for its release, and sales expectations were high; Funatics' previous title, Catan: Die Erste Insel, had become a sleeper hit.