Mohan's Stock Drop

Catch the medicine strips falling off Mohan's shelf, dodge the grey ones, and you have quietly learnt what his shop actually has.

Who this is for

Mohan Sahu, 54, runs Sahu Medical Stores near the Shankar Nagar crossing in Raipur. Around fourteen hundred items on his racks, one helper named Deepak, and a red plastic stool where two or three people always sit waiting. At six in the evening there are five people at the counter, the phone is ringing with the sixth, and the boy on the stool has been staring at the ceiling fan for eight minutes.

How the job is done today

A customer asks, Mohan shouts to Deepak, Deepak climbs the stool and checks the third rack, and the answer comes back after ninety seconds. The phone rings twenty times a day with the same question, and Mohan answers it while counting change. Twice a week he puts up a WhatsApp status with a photo of the new syrup carton, which some people see and most do not. What is finished lives in Mohan's head and in Deepak's head, and the two heads do not always agree. The boy on the stool learns nothing about the shop he is sitting in.

The screens, in order

1. Drop — Starts a round the moment you tap, with no name, no number and nothing to sign up for.
2. The Fall — This is the game itself, where real boxes and strips from Mohan's racks come down the screen and you slide a basket under the ones worth catching.
3. What You Caught — Shows the round's haul as actual medicines with Mohan's price beside each one, so the play turns into knowledge without anybody being taught.
4. Keep It Aside — Lets you pick two or three things you caught and send Mohan a message asking him to hold them till you come.
5. Mohan's Racks — Behind a four digit code, this is where Mohan or Deepak runs a thumb down the list and marks what is over.

What it keeps track of

• The shelf — medicine name, what people usually take it for in plain words, price, box colour, there or finished, when it was last touched
• Rounds — nickname if they gave one, when they played, what fell, what they caught, what they let go, the score
• Keep aside list — name and phone, what they asked for, which day, picked up or still waiting
• Shop card — shop name, shutter timings, Mohan's WhatsApp number, the four digit code

The one decision that matters

Should the medicines Mohan has run out of fall at all? One way is to drop only what is on the racks, so everything you catch is real and buyable and nobody is ever disappointed. The other way is to let the finished ones fall too, drawn in grey, costing you points if you catch them. Go with the grey ones falling. A game where every falling thing is worth catching is not a game, it is a list moving downwards, and people stop after one round. Dodging is what makes the thumb move. It also happens to be the exact thing the customer walked in to find out, and now they find it out while enjoying themselves instead of while waiting for Deepak to climb the stool.

What to leave out of the first version

No payment, no delivery, no prescription photos. The shop is three hundred metres from most of the people playing and they were coming anyway. Also leave out any comparison of scores between different shops. The moment a stranger in Bhilai is on the same board, Mohan stops recognising the names, and the whole point is that he sees Deepak's cousin at number one and laughs about it at the counter.

How you would know it worked

A boy reaches the counter and names the cough syrup himself, because the green box went past his basket twice and he missed it both times, and Deepak does not climb the stool to check.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I have a medical store in Raipur and people wait ten minutes for their turn, so I want a small game they can play on their phone while standing there. Medicine boxes from my own shelf should fall down the screen and they catch them by sliding a basket, but the ones I have marked finished should fall in grey and cost them points if they catch those. It has to work fully with the sound switched off, because they play it standing in my shop and in the clinic next door. At the end of a round show what they caught with my price against each, and let them pick two or three and send me a message so I keep it aside. Give me a separate screen with a four digit code where only I can go down my list and mark what is over.