Rajesh's Tent Tapper

Tap as fast as your thumb will go to raise poles, drape the shamiana and string the lights, and the fastest thumbs hold the top of the board.

Who this is for

Rajesh Yadav runs a tent house in Barabanki, near Lucknow. Forty shamiana poles, six hundred plastic chairs, two trucks and four boys who load them. In wedding season a customer sits in his shop while Rajesh is on the phone with the halwai, sorting out a booking for the twenty-second. The customer waits eleven minutes. Rajesh wants something to hand him instead of an apology.

How the job is done today

Right now that eleven minutes is a ceiling fan and old forwards on WhatsApp. The bragging, though, is real. Chotu says he got the full canopy up at the Verma wedding faster than anyone has ever done it. Sonu says that is a lie and he was standing right there. It gets settled by shouting in the godown, and it never actually gets settled. Rajesh's diary has dates, advance amounts and how many chairs went where. Nothing in it says who was fast. The only score anybody keeps is in their own head, and it changes depending on who is telling the story.

The screens, in order

1. Name and go — Asks for a first name and a town so a score has somebody attached to it, then gets out of the way in one tap.
2. The ground — An empty maidan where every tap raises the next thing, poles then cloth then lights, until thirty seconds run out.
3. Your round — Shows how much of the pandal stood up before the clock ended and where that number sits against everyone else.
4. The board — Ranks names and towns by speed, with this week's list beside the all time list so a new player still has something to chase.
5. Pass it on — Hands over a link to send into the family group so somebody else can try beating the number.

What it keeps track of

• Player — the name typed in, the town, best round so far, when they last played
• Round — who played, how many tents went up, how long they lasted, which day and what time
• Shared link — who sent it, which score it points at, how many people opened it

The one decision that matters

Every tap has to do something, but where must the tap land? One way: the whole screen is the button, tap anywhere and the next pole goes up in a fixed order. The other way: a small target drifts about the ground and you have to hit it, so aim counts as much as speed. Go with the whole screen. The boys play sitting in the truck with dusty thumbs. The waiting customer plays on a phone with a crack running across the middle. Rajesh's mother has a five-year-old handset that registers a touch half a beat late. A moving target quietly ranks eyesight and handsets instead of speed. One button the size of the screen measures the one thing the game claims to measure.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out sign-up completely. No accounts, no passwords, no code sent by SMS. A man waiting eleven minutes for a quotation will not make an account, and neither will Chotu. A first name and a town, typed once and remembered on that phone, is enough to hold a place on the board. Leave out sound as well, since most of these plays happen in a shop where the phone is already on silent and the fan is louder anyway.

How you would know it worked

The name at the top of the board changes three times in one evening and Rajesh did not ask anybody to play. A customer says wait, one more go, before he asks about the rate for two hundred chairs.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I have a tent house in Barabanki and customers sit waiting in my shop for a long time, so I want a small game they can play on my phone. One screen with an empty ground, and every tap puts up another pole, then the cloth, then the lights, with thirty seconds on the clock. A tap anywhere should count, no aiming, because half these phones have cracked glass. At the end show how many tents went up and add the name and town to a ranking list, one for this week and one for all time. Ask for the name only the first time and keep it after that. Give me a link I can send into the family group so my boys can try beating each other. No sign up, no payment, and it must run on a slow phone.