The rules of the table.
Short, because it is a free browser game and there is not much to argue about.
Screwcap Games, LLC · last updated 1 August 2026
1 · What this is
Kitchen Table is a free teaching game about household money, published by Screwcap Games, LLC. You play a household living through a real episode of monetary history and make eight decisions with money that does not exist. Using the site means you accept these terms.
2 · This is not financial advice — and here it matters more than usual
Every boilerplate disclaimer says this. Read this one, because this game is specifically designed to feel like it is teaching you something about money, and it is:
- Nothing here is a recommendation. Not the house, not the savings account, not the certificate, not the shares, not the decision to sit tight.
- No rate quoted anywhere in this game is a rate you can get today. They are the real rates of 1979–81 and 2021–23. A 5.25% savings ceiling was a law that no longer exists; a 12.9% mortgage was a fact about a year that has passed.
- The households and their prices are invented. The interest rates, the inflation and the law are real and sourced in the footer of every page. The Marchettis, the Ruiz household, the $58,000 house, the $265 rent and the $6,200 car are authored, era-plausible, and not recorded history. The game labels which is which and we would rather it kept doing so.
- The economic model is a model. It is a good one — the same engine that runs THE CHAIR — and it is calibrated against published data, and it is still a simplification of an economy, which is a thing nobody has ever successfully modelled.
- The "what happened next" epilogues are history, not forecast. Buying a house at 12.9% in 1979 worked out. That is a fact about 1979 and tells you nothing about this year.
If you are making an actual decision about an actual mortgage, talk to somebody qualified and regulated. What this game is for is making the vocabulary familiar before you have to.
3 · Your run belongs to you
Your saved run lives in your browser and we cannot read it. There is no account to lose access to. Equally: we cannot restore it. Clear your browser data and it is gone.
4 · Ours belongs to us
The code, the writing, the design, the scenarios, the economic model and the name are owned by Screwcap Games, LLC. Play it, share it, screenshot it, post the share card, use it in a classroom — all fine and actively encouraged. Copying the game to publish it as your own is not.
The share card is yours to post anywhere you like.
5 · Ads and paying
The game is free. There are at most two ad spaces, both outside the run itself, and there may be an optional one-time purchase to remove them. If you buy it, the ad network is not merely hidden but never loaded — see the privacy page.
Purchases, if any, are handled by Gumroad as merchant of record. Refunds follow Gumroad's process and we will not fight you over a few dollars: write to us and we will make it right.
6 · It is a prototype and it may break
The site is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind. We do not promise it will be available, or that a saved run will survive an update to the game's numbers — when a scenario's physics change, saves for that scenario are deliberately invalidated, because replaying under an engine that has moved would give you a wrong answer.
To the fullest extent the law allows, Screwcap Games, LLC is not liable for indirect or consequential loss arising from your use of the site, and our total liability is capped at what you have paid us, which for almost everybody is nothing.
7 · Acceptable use
Do not attack the site, scrape it at volume, try to break the admin endpoints, or post the game somewhere as though it were yours. Do not use it to give anybody financial advice.
8 · Changes
We may update these terms. Material changes get a new date at the top of this page. Continuing to use the site after that means you accept them.
9 · Governing law
Delaware, United States.