Reiner Knizia is a German games designer who has won numerous awards and is known for having developed his first game at the tender age of six. He has designed well over 500 games; he is highly acclaimed as a designer, having won the Deutscher Spiele Preis four times. Knizia has also designed various game applications specifically for the iPhone & iPod touch, including Monumental, Roto and Robot Master.
Knizia is truly a versatile free games designer, with having designed games from most categories like: small two-player card games, children's games, simple games, sophisticated games, and even a live-action roleplaying game.
Most of Knizia’s games tend not to try to model a specific environment, but instead try to invoke the thought and decision-making processes that are key to the theme. In this game-world the players are always attempting to price risk.
Some of his most famous games are: Amun-Re winner of the Deutscher Spiele Preis 2003, Kingdoms Winner of the Origins Award for Best Abstract Board Game of 2002, Blue Moon, Keltis winner of the Spiel des Jahres 2008, Lord of the Rings winner of the Spiel des Jahres 2001 special prize for best use of literature in a game, Lost Cities winner, International Gamers Award 2000 for Best 2-player strategy game and many more.
But let’s get back to Knizia’s ipod touch games:
Monumental
On a first sight this game seems simple enough, the goal in this game is to complete each horizontal row with matching tiles like: the same symbol, the same color, a perfect pair of two out of three tiles and the same number of symbols, the more of these you match in a row the more points you get.
Roto
The rules here are simple to understand so anyone can play, but mastering all the challenges and planning ahead to use the best possible combinations is harder than it may seem. You can pause and resume whenever it suits you.
Robot Master
Take turns placing numbered cards down on a 5 x 5 grid to score lines both vertically and horizontally. The scores for each line are determined by the sum of the cards.
At the end the one thing you need to remember, is that Reiner Knizia’s games are a lot let simple then you give them credit.
Games On iPod Touch - Reiner Knizia
