Top 10 Knizia Games of 2025 - with Mike DiLisio

0:05 You've been such a fantastic game designer that I really would like to offer you this lovely little candy, this treat. I think you're really going to enjoy it here. Uh oh. Hello. I'm so sorry I didn't see you there. Uh, [clears throat] my name's Mike Delissio and I would like to present to you my top 10 games of 2025 from designer Reiner Kitia who in this humble reporter's opinion is the best game designer on the entire planet. And um, so yes, I am a big fan of Dr. Rhiner Kitia have been for many years and uh his games tend to show up quite often on my lists and so I thought it might be fun since he is such a prolific designer to do a top 10 games designed by him this year. I did the same thing last year. He designs a lot of games and I really tried to prioritize games that were new designs in uh 2025. Now, there are a lot of re-implementations and kind of redoss and re themes of Riner Kenitzia's games, and there are a couple of those on here, but I'll try to make notes as to why I decided to include them. The bottom line is that it's my list. It's kind of a fun little list, and so I'm not taking it uh as seriously as I might a a like a top of top 10 of 2025 list, although I do take my Kitia games pretty seriously. All right, here

1:36 we go. Number 10 is Kingdom of Dice. This is coming from Mandu Games, a Korean publisher, and this is one of Kitia's dice rolling games. In this one, it's going to be using kind of a familiar uh mechanic to drive it where it's kind of the yatsi style mechanism where you're rolling dice, you can keep dice, re-roll some dice, and you're trying to um get on a shared kind of board the highest scores that you can get. And um it's just another one of these games that he seems to design at will. These fun push your luck dice games with very little rules to get in the way. And it really comes down to the players trying to determine who's going to be taking the risks and and trying to uh take advantage maybe of their weaknesses by egging them on. Uh so there you go. Number nine is Blooming Sea. This is coming from uh a different Korean publisher actually, Korea Board Games. This is a tile laying game. Uh and he is also Kiti is known quite a bit for making some tile laying games that are of uh pretty high renown. And this is one that's very simple. It's a family weight game where you're going to be placing out these um kind of Tetris style pieces that have different colored coral on them and you're trying to place them so that they're going to create larger groups of coral. and you're going to score accordingly. And you're also trying to surround fish that are randomly seated on the board. If they

3:06 get surrounded with coral, the player color who has the majority will be able to claim that fish and some points that go with it. Very simple family game, very charming, uh, light and breezy, blooming sea. Number eight is Raw and Right. And this is a flip andright style game that is in the RAW family of games, of which there have been several over the years. Raw is my number one game of all time uh as of the time of this recording. And um and so I already have a lot of uh esteem for the elements that make that game so great. And one of the elements of RAW that I really enjoy is the scoring. And that's really the only part of RAW that you're going to be getting out of RAW and write. and also that the the the push your luck element.

3:53 So, it's a game where you're flipping over cards and you're going to be doing some set collection. You know, some similar ideas that you have in RAW. Instead of like pulling things out of a bag, you're flipping cards, but it really focuses on kind of the different ways of scoring that you see in RAW, like things like the the uh river and the Nile to kind of do river scoring, the the different types of monuments, things along those lines. But it takes that kind of scoring system and the push your luck element turns it into a pretty compelling flip and right game. Uh so like that one quite a bit. That is raw and right. And number seven is carakorum if I'm pronouncing that correctly. And this is a game that's kind of in the family of games that uh you see in like Lost Cities or Celtus, two of his very well-known games where you're playing cards in an ascending fashion. And uh in this game, you are kind of controlling three mountain climbers and you're trying to get those mountain climbers as high up the peak as you possibly can.

4:59 and you're competing with other players uh of course to be getting the highest values from those three different uh climbers which are represented by colors that you're going to be getting on cards that you'll flip over. You can flip over up to three cards one at a time and you can stop at any point but if you go beyond one uh you're giving a possibility of cards to the other players playing. Really really solid game. I love that he continues to squeeze so much juice out of this particular fruit of these ascending card games. Number six is The Hobbit There and Back Again. And this is a rollandright style game that is set in the world of The Hobbit. And this is a game that has kind of almost like a board book uh that is dry erase. If you remember like the old baby books back in the day where they're big and chunky, you flip them over. Um, I don't know if you could chew on this. I wouldn't necessarily try it, but maybe you could.

5:56 But the idea is that you're rolling dice and each chapter, there's eight chapters, is going to be playing played somewhat differently. Although most of the time you're doing some type of route building, you might be doing some kind of tetromeo style shape placement to kind of connect things, get bonuses, things along those lines. and you're competing with the other players to be the first to complete certain goals so that you can get some bonus points, things along those lines. A really solid game in a very very um saturated genre, the Rolling Wright game. I feel like this does some unique things that help it from standing out. Number five is Gazebo. And this one is a bit of a re-implementation. Uh none of the others have been so far. This is a remake of a game called Chin, which came out many, many years ago. and has been out of print for quite a while. Uh, the reason why I chose to include it in this list is that they did make a pretty significant a couple of pretty significant rules changes that I think definitely added to the appeal for me.

6:58 Um, this is a abstract style game where you're going to be placing out uh pieces essentially dominoes, but they're going to have either one color on them or two colors and you're placing them out onto a shared board and you're trying to create groupings and you're trying to surround different areas, a bit of an area majority thing going on. Uh, it could be a very very cutthroat game. It's one that I prefer at two players. It can play two to four. Um, but a a rockolid design that um deserved to get kind of re-established and get more players uh checking this one out. That is Gazebo. Number four is Icor. So, this is um from publisher Bitewing Games. And several of these games are going to be showing up here. And um Gazebo actually was one of them. And it's because they have done a lot of work with uh Rhiner Kenitzi over the last several years and they have really created a powerhouse team of publisher um developer and designer um throughout their partnership. And IOR or IOR, I always want to say IOR, I'm pretty sure it's IOR, is a two-player game. They released two two-player games concurrently. This is one of the two.

8:16 This is actually an implementation of a very old pure abstract game that I have never played. I don't know if anyone's played it. I'm not sure Dr. Rin or Kenitzia has played it. This game was not out there. Okay. Um but anyway, this is one where you are headtohead and you have characters that you're controlling that have different powers. It's kind of a lane battling type of a thing, but not really. It's more of a grid- based system. Um, but the special abilities of each of the characters is what makes this game so compelling. It's uh it's really one that the more you play it, the better it becomes because you know what every character's power is. And so, not only do you know how to uh exploit it on your turn, you kind of know how to counter it when the other player is placing it. And if both players are at equal skill levels, man, this game can be really, really tense. A fantastic game. Number three is Orbit, a brand new race game set in space, also from Bitewing Games. This game really snuck up on me because it seems so unassuming.

9:22 It's a very simple game mechanically. Um, you know, you're you're just playing a card. You you play one card, do what it says, it's the next player's turn. But within that simple rule set is a fantastic, very interactive racing game where you are racing to get your spaceship on all of the planets. There's different colored planets that all are on their own orbits and you are playing cards to manipulate the planets to give you movement points so that you can get onto those planets. You have some uh bonuses that you can unlock. And again, this is just one of those games that you hear the rules and you think, "Okay." And then you play it and you go, "Wow, that is fantastic." Um, really, really terrific game is Orbit. Number two is Iliad. This is the other two-player game that was released at the same time as IIO by um by Bitewing. This is a knife fight in a foam booth is what I call it.

10:23 You've got a small grid board. There are scoring uh tiles around the outside of every row and column. And you're going to be placing a a number value of your color on that board. And what you're trying to do is get the most influence in each row and column. Certain [snorts] numbers though, most numbers have some type of an ability that allow you to affect other things that are happening on this board. And so every single [snorts] turn from the beginning of the game to the end of the game feels tense and so impactful that I have had so many fantastic games of this. It really there's just something about it that again the rules get out of the way very quickly. you kind of learn what everything does. You understand how the scoring works and then you go and it is just so tense the whole way through. Um, some people might like not like that. If you don't really like this kind of feeling of everything being so important, you may not like it, but I love it. Just a fantastic game. And number one is Ego. This is a reimplementation of a game called Bailwolf the game. Bailwolf the movie the game. I don't remember exactly. It was themed around that Balewolf movie that came out several years ago. I had never played that. I uh believe that there were some pretty significant changes that were made to this game and so I included it on this list. I just love this game.

11:55 This is a card driven game where you're kind of going in a very particular order. There's a spaceship that kind of will chart your path through these different boards that are laid out. only the first and the last boards are fixed and this the kind of intermediary boards are randomized and depending upon which boards come out in which order can really impact the way the game plays. But it's essentially a game that has a heavy element of auctioning where the cards that you have you're going to be using to auction uh to be able to take particular actions at different strengths and things along those lines. Um there's also a heavy element of push your luck and risk management. Such [snorts] a fantastic, fantastic game. Um, from the first time I played it, I was knocked out and it has only gotten better as I've continued to play it, teach it to new players. I just love Ego. All right, well, that's going to do it for me. 10 fantastic games from Riner Kitia in the year 2025. I'm already looking forward to what is on the docket for next year, but I'll have these games to play for many, many years to come.

13:01 That's going to do it for me. This is Mike Delisio. I'll see you on the next one. Hey folks, I'm Tom Vassel. Thanks for watching this video. Check out our channel. We have a lot of videos on our channel. We have live videos that go up each week from live Q&As's to videos where we take a look at the newest stuff on Kickstarter, crowd surfing to top 10 lists and more. There's lots of stuff on this channel. We encourage you to explore it. You can find out more at our website, dicetowwer.com. I'm Tom Bassel. Thanks for watching another video on the Dice Tower.