Vikram's Medicine Counter

A customer asks for something for a burning stomach, you have eleven seconds and forty boxes, and the shop next door is also open.

Who this is for

Nandini is 26 and works the evening counter at her father's medical store in Hubballi, two cupboards and a fridge beside a bus stop. Between seven and nine it is roughly thirty customers and one of her. After she pulls the shutter down she sits on the step waiting for her brother to come with the scooter. That fifteen minutes, with a phone and no signal to spare, is where this lands.

How the job is done today

The game already exists, it just runs on her feet. A man holds out a prescription folded four times and torn at the crease. A woman says the small white tablet, blue strip, the one you gave last month. Her father shouts a name from the back room. The boy climbs the stool for the top rack while the customer turns his head towards the shop across the lane, and sometimes he walks. On the phone afterwards she plays a card game about a farm, which she is quite good at and does not care about at all. Nothing on that phone knows what a shelf feels like.

The screens, in order

1. Shutter Up — Starts your shift and shows the shelf you have been given, so you get four seconds to see where things are before anyone walks in.
2. The Counter — One customer at a time asks for something in their own words, and you tap the box you think they mean before they lose patience.
3. The Shelf — Holds every box you own in racks you must reach through, which is where the whole difficulty lives.
4. He Walked — Shows you exactly what the customer wanted, what you handed over, and where they went instead, in a way that is worth showing the person sitting beside you.
5. Shutter Down — Counts how many you got right in a row before the streak broke, and offers you tomorrow's shift immediately.

What it keeps track of

• Who walks in — what they ask for, how they describe it, how long they will wait, what they will accept instead, what they do if you get it wrong
• Your shelf — the box, which rack, how high, how many left, what it is actually for
• The shift — which day, how many served, how many right in a row, who walked out, how much came in
• Near enough — which box stands in for which other box, and whether the customer takes it or asks again

The one decision that matters

The real choice is what the player has to know. One way, the game tests medicine knowledge, and being wrong means you handed a person the wrong thing. That is not funny, it is shameful, and nobody opens it twice. The other way, everything is written plainly on the box and the difficulty is your own shelf. You know you have it. You put the syrups on the top rack yourself last Tuesday. You are reaching past three boxes of the same green to find the one you need while a man taps a coin on the counter. Go the second way. Losing then means you were slow and badly organised, which is a story you tell out loud, not one you hide.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out running the business. No buying from the distributor, no prices, no profit at the end of the month, no arranging your own shelf between shifts. All of that sounds like a good second version and it would smother the first one, because the thing people come back for is a man walking out of your shop over a cough syrup. Give them only the counter and the shelf and the eleven seconds.

How you would know it worked

Two people are leaning over one phone at an actual counter, and one of them is describing a customer who walked out over antacid while the other one is already trying to beat her streak.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I want a small phone game where you are behind the counter of a medical store and customers keep walking in asking for things the way real people ask, like something for burning stomach or the small white tablet with the blue strip, and you have to tap the right box from your shelf before they get bored and go to the shop next door. The boxes should be spread across racks so I have to remember where I put things. Count how many I get right in a row. When I get one wrong, show me what they actually wanted and let me watch them walk out, and make that bit worth laughing at, then put me straight back on the counter without any menus.