Time to party – 40 years of Knizia Games!

Pop the champagne corks in 2025 to celebrate 4 decades of fun and bringing enjoyment to the people worldwide by Reiner Knizia and his publishing partners around the globe.

Let’s take a quick look back into the past: Reiner’s publishing career started in 1985 with a self-published play-by-mail magazine “Postspillion” and published games in various magazines. From there, it was only a small step towards the first game boxes. In 1990, Reiner hit the gold vein with Digging and Goldrausch. The following years brought top-sellers like Quo Vadis, Pirat/Loot, Tutanchamun, Auf Heller und Pfennig/Kingdoms and many more to the players – over 800 games big and small (and medium too!) have been published up to 2025. And there are still a lot more in the pipeline…!

In 1993, Reiner’s Modern Art was crowned with the German Game Prize and from then on national and international awards came rolling in. Including the double-hit of Spiel des Jahres (Keltis) and Kinderspiel des Jahres (Wer War’s?) in Germany in 2008.

Today, Knizia Games is also proudly looking at Game of the Year awards in France, Spain, Italy, Poland, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Brazil, Japan, and even Down Under in Australia.

More important than all the awards, however, is the ongoing fulfilment of our mission “Bringing Enjoyment to the People”. Therefore, we call upon the many, many fans of Reiner’s games in all corners of the world to celebrate with us the 40 Year Anniversary of Knizia Games: Get to the tables, set up a game and let the fun continue!

Thank you for all your support!

Chartae with a nice touch!

A message reached us from Spain a while ago that Reiner’s game Chartae is now also popular with the visually impaired gamers. Publisher Ouril developed alternative game material which allows players to feel the coast lines and sea waves on the Chartae tiles rather than see them.

To the eye of the average beholder the tiles may appear a bit bleak but lower your lids and let your fingertips do the looking and you will get a feel of the special appeal of this unusual version of our game.

We wish all players of “Chartae Adaptado” a wonderful experience!

Let the good times roll!

Our Dutch publisher 999 Games is presenting our Pick A Pen line – a new roll and write concept in which you do not roll any dice, but you roll coloured pencils instead.

The first three games in the line are Gardens (Tuinen), Reef (Riffen) and Crypt (Crypten), and each game offers several scenarios.

To start the game, you roll all five pencils and pick one of them. On each of the six sides of each pencil there are different symbols.

By choosing the colour you want to use, you also choose a certain symbol – or vice versa.

With this combination of colour and symbol you mark or colour spaces on your play sheet, and hopefully you will do it optimally so that at the end of the game you will have the most beautiful garden, collect the most valuable treasure, or be the best at deciphering the inscriptions in the crypt.

Pick a game, pick a scenario, and Pick A Pen!

Home Alone

Living on a desert island? Stuck in a pandemic? The kids don’t want to play with you? No problem!

Together with Schmidt Spiele, Reiner has published the For One line of games which gives the lonesome player the chance to beat himself at Kniffel and other games.

In contrast to other playful self-activities, in particular those involving solving puzzles and logical thinking, or even digital one-person games that you play in front of a screen, with the new For One line Reiner wants to convey the same feelings and tension that you get in a multi-player social game. The only difference is that there are no other players making moves. You make one move after another, so it is always your turn and you are always involved!

These games are not “brain teasers”, because all our For One games have challenging random elements built in which you have to adapt to move by move.

Each For One game comes with many levels of increasing difficulty, but the random elements mean that no two games are the same, so you can try your luck again and again at the same level.

Don’t forget: “Fortune favours the brave.”

Offline Fun in Brazil

In 2023 with the pandemic officially declared over, Reiner accepted an invitation to visit the Diversão Offline event in Brazil, and flew over for the weekend so that he could meet our Brazilian partners and extend our publisher relationships in South America.

Reiner thanks everybody for the warm reception he received in São Paulo – by the publishers as well as by the gamers.