Culture Series by Funatics

This series was developed by a Germany team. The first in the series takes you to the New World *North America). It was not popular in the USA because of the Micro-management needed. It is a cute game, Hagar the Horrible type vikings. Very male chauvinistic as the women are definitely barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen or at least collecting food from bakeries manned by men. Bah Humbug.

The second in the series, Gates of Asgard, improved as far as the management went but trying to persuade reviews here was hopeless. They complained no matter what. It was popular with people from different parts of the world. I think Sierra, if I recall correctly, published the first two games. The second game took you to England and Europe and eventually the Gates of Asgard. The final scenario of the campaign was very hard.

The third game was published by GMX Media. It is called Northland. You wander around quite a bit meet up with some nasty monsters and end up in Hel's Realm. A beautiful place if rather cold. I did find Northland a bit buggy. They added a manager assistant that further cut down on the micro-management.

The fourth game, 8Th Wonder of the World, is in my opinion more an adventure story than a village builder. You have to reconstruct the seven wonders of the world and an eighth is added. I really like the ending. And that was the end. Either the folks at Funatics got bored or annoyed at the player's complaints and said no more. It was fun while it lasted.

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Temple

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One of the places built into the map to be interacted with.

Headquarters and dwelling
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Building a warehouse [img][/img] [img][IMG][img][/img]

Recap of the series:

Playing some of 8th Wonder makes me wonder why I was so caught up in it orginally. There are quite a few things that annoy me starting with the fact that it is so blatently male chauvinistic.

I started with the 2nd game in the series and was still young to game playing. I had played Ceasar II & III and it was a change, cute and watching the silly little people go about their life was rather fun. GMX Media took over the publishin for Northland and 8th Wonder. The people on the forum were a very nice group and it was nice to interact with them. I got the job of moderator by complain that we were an active forum without a moderator. It was an easy job and mainly I just encourage non-English people to post. Helped out with advice and even a save game which people could use if they were having problems with a certain quest. It was early in the game so they could still do their own thing with the rest. Northland I found a bit buggy and 8th Wonder was more an adventure game than a Village builder and it went quite quickly. I did love the ending. We were all sad when the series ended and went our separate ways.

Any resemblance to Vikings is pretty much non-existent in my opinion. They didn't do much with ships and trying to trade with ships is very laborsome. Lots of other minor things that could have been improved and added to the enjoyment of playing the game.

The editor wa a simplied version of the actual game editor. I tried to get the original editor but was missing the exe file and got involved in other things so never bothered to try and get it straightened out.

I wish I had the money to develop a really good Viking game, one that more closely resembled the real thing. That period, The dark ages, is interesting. It was a harsh time when feudal lords ruled and might was right. Come to think of it I find certain resemblance to our modern time.

Would I recommend this game? Assuming that you can buy it I would only recommend it to someone who likes cartoonish type games and can suspend belief in reality. The first game I do not think is available. I wanted to complete the series and an online friend tracked a copy to the UK ebay were I got it dirt cheap.