Cubes in Kraków

Polish publisher Muduko invited Reiner to visit the BookGame Fair in Kraków in March 2025 and spend a day with interviewers and fans.

On the fair, a group of Rubik’s Cube artists wowed the crowd by twisting and turning hundreds of cubes each day to create a giant pixelated masterpiece. On Saturday, with Reiner as the fair’s special guest, their swift fingers flew into action, solving and assembling exactly 1,008 cubes to form a massive portrait of Reiner. After more than two hours of signing game boxes and posing for photos with a sea of enthusiastic fans, Reiner finally got to admire the cube-crafted version of his face, clearly impressed, though possibly wondering if his nose really was that square.

To round off the day, Reiner played the new version of Whale Riders – just published by Muduko with new artwork under the title Trakty i Kontrakty – in the finals against the two best players of the day’s Knizia Games Tournament. The final was won by a 12-year-old girl. Congratulations!

Dusty tables

Spanish publisher Mercurio has scored a huge hit with their game Pelusas, originally designed by Reiner under the title Hit, a game that’s now been published in at least eight different languages and art styles around the world.

Pelusas means “dust balls” and just like real dust, the game is steadily spreading across the Iberian Peninsula, covering tables and even turning players into walking, giggling dust balls.

A group of colleagues from a cancer research team in Barcelona sent us these pictures showing how they celebrated Carnival by dressing up as Pelusas!

Also, we wish Mercurio all the best for their 20th anniversary which they were celebrating at InterOcio in Madrid in March 2025!

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!