A shoebox of letters, appraised at nothing. Bid on it anyway and she will hear.

The reserve

Every lot has two prices. The court only defends one of them.

Here's the part that took me a minute.

Every lot carries a reserve, printed on the card. Nobody beats it, nothing is sold, and the lot goes free to whoever the will names. The court sets the reserve from the appraisal. Take the lake lot. It's worth $3,200, so its reserve is 13: the court won't sell it for less than a 14. Mercer bids his highest share on it anyway.

The letters are worth nothing. In the demo's estate their reserve is 3, so any share from 4 up clears it. The court isn't the problem. June filed a 15 on them, so only your 17 takes them.

That's the trick of the whole game. The court protects money. It doesn't protect what somebody loved.

So every lot also has a weight, from 1 to 3, and that's the other price. When anybody takes a lot the will names to somebody else (you or a sibling), that heir's grudge goes up by its weight. The letters weigh 3. So does the lake lot ("Mercer paid those taxes for eleven years."). The china weighs only 1.

A $0 shoebox and a $3,200 lake lot cost you the same with the person who wanted them.

The fourth chair

The fourth chair is a recording.

June filed one number per lot before the sitting. Her rule is printed in the game, word for word:

"She filed one number per lot, in order, before the sitting. If she still holds that number, she bids it. If she does not, the line is void and she does not bid. A void line is never re-filed. She cannot see this sitting."

So June can't react to you. But you can wreck her plans without meaning to. Take a lot she was counting on, and the share she expected to pick up never reaches her hand. Every later line that filed that share goes void.

Here's what that looks like in the estate from the demo. If you take the letters with your 17, June never picks up the 8 from the table. She filed that 8 on five later lots, so all five lines go void. One of them is lot 10, her own piano. She can't bid on it. Mercer takes it, her grudge hits 6, and she contests. At the accounting the letters go back to her.

(After lot 1, the rest of that run was played by the game's balanced bot. I also ran it with the bot that bids its highest share on every lot and the one that only bids on its own lots. All three finished at zero stars. Bid a 4 on the letters instead, let June have them, and the same balanced bot finishes the estate with all three.)

And here's the part I like best. Finish a sitting and it's filed. Come back to the same estate and the fourth chair is you: every number you committed, opened one lot at a time, against you.

A memory can sue you.

Play the demo's estate from lot 1 →

The accounting

You can't keep everything. The accounting shows you what it cost.

After lot 12 the whole board comes up one last time: who holds what, what's being taken back, and by whom. Then three rows, one star each.

• THE ESTATEthe appraised value you keep. The bar is 30% of what all twelve lots are worth.
• HIS INTENTof the three lots he meant for you, keep two.
• THE FAMILYnobody contests.

Take everything and it gets taken back. Keep the peace at any price and THE ESTATE star usually goes with it. Nobody fails: a bad sitting still gets graded.

I ran the game's bots through 200 estates to see which habits pay. A bot that takes what's named to it, buys value with the cheapest share that clears the reserve, and never makes the bid that sends someone to a lawyer averaged 2.19 stars out of 3. Siblings still contested 0.24 times a sitting, every time over a lot one sibling took from another. A bot that bids its highest share on every lot averaged 1.39 stars and saw 1.55 contests a sitting. June contested in 61% of those estates.

Those are bots. Nobody outside of development has played it yet.

Questions for the referee

Questions

How long is a sitting?

Twelve lots. The design target is four to six minutes; nobody's timed a stranger yet.

Do I need to know auction games?

No. The referee teaches each rule on the lot where it first comes up.

What are the controls?

Click a share, then SEAL THE BID. Or use 1 to 4 to pick, ENTER to seal, SPACE for the next lot. L opens the ledger, ESC calls a recess.

Is it sad?

It's about an inheritance, so if you've been through a real one lately, it may sit close. Otherwise it's quiet. The lots are specific and the writing is dry. Take the oak desk: it comes with "one drawer locked", and its whole story is one line: "The key is not in this estate."

Is the AI cheating?

No. Nothing in the code lets a hand read another seat's bid. Hallie and Mercer follow the habit printed on their card, with a small fixed wobble for Mercer so he isn't a lookup table. June bids only her filed numbers.

Where does June's affidavit come from?

Until you've finished a sitting of an estate, a bot plays June's chair in it under the real rules when the game loads, and its bids become her affidavit. After you've finished a sitting, coming back to that estate puts your own filed bids in her chair.

Does it work?

The game ships with a test script that checks every rule on 15 estates: 1,713 checks, all passing on 1 October 2026.

Does it cost anything?

No. Nothing to buy, no ads, no account.