Panipuri Wala: run a thela in your browser
A silly desi street-food game: match every order, give the free sukha puri, and catch the uncle who lies about his count.
Panipuri Wala is a small browser game about the most chaotic job on any Indian street: the panipuri stall. You are the bhaiya behind the thela, a queue of customers is holding out leaf bowls, and every one of them wants something slightly different. Play it here, on a phone or a laptop. There is nothing to install and no sign-up.
How to play
Tap a puri, fill it with aloo-chana, dip it in the right matka and tap the customer. The order bubble tells you which pani: teekha, meetha or hing-jeera. Two chillies mean a double dip, and a crossed-out aloo means leave it out. Wait while they chew, and when an order is done, they will want the free sukha puri. Three customers walking off in a huff and the thela is band.
The first day is a guided training round, so the game shows you each next tap.
The regulars
Fourteen of them, each with a habit. College Didi wants it spicier halfway through ("Bhaiya, thoda aur teekha karo na!"). Hisaab Uncle claims he ate fewer than he did, so the game lets you call him out. Dadi eats slowly and calls you beta. The Influencer stops for a photo before every bite, Havaldar-ji expects a discount, and Gym Bhai insists it is his cheat day. Leave anyone waiting too long and you will hear about it before they leave.
The street interrupts too: bees on the meetha matka, a cow parking in front of a customer, an auto splashing mud across the counter, a power cut, a baraat dancing past and a gully cricket ball aimed at your matkas.
Six cities, six names
Every day the thela moves: golgappe in Delhi, panipuri in Mumbai, puchka in Kolkata, batashe in Lucknow, gupchup in Bhubaneswar and pakodi in Ahmedabad. Each street has its own hand-painted shop signs in the local script, its own traffic and its own hawkers calling out in the background.
The start screen carries a few snack facts between rounds, including the popular legend that Draupadi invented panipuri to feed the Pandavas, along with the inconvenient detail that potatoes only reached India in the 1600s.
How it is made
It is plain JavaScript with no framework. The characters, the cart and the streets are drawn in code as SVG, the sound effects and the street radio are synthesised in the browser, and the customers speak through the browser's built-in voices. The first visit is about 100 KB.