Chai Tapri

Where there is a road in India, there is probably a chai tapri: a small stall, a gas stove, a big kettle and a line of people who need their tea. This game puts you behind the counter. You are the chaiwala, customers are lining up, and everyone has their own taste. Can you keep the whole street happy?

How to play

• Customers wait at the stall. The customer with the golden border is first in line, and the recipe they want is shown as a row of icons.
• Tap the ingredient buttons in exactly that order: for example, water, tea, milk, sugar for a Cutting Chai.
• If you tap the wrong ingredient, the glass is emptied and your customer loses a few seconds of patience, so concentrate.
• Each customer has a patience bar. If it runs out, they leave angry and you lose a heart. Lose all three hearts and the tapri closes for the day.
• Serve quickly for a bigger tip. A fast order earns up to ten extra points.

On a keyboard, press the keys 1 to 7 for the ingredients in the order they appear, and Backspace to empty the glass.

The menu

You start with two simple orders, Cutting Chai (water, tea, milk, sugar) and a lemon tea, here called Sulaimani (water, tea, sugar, lemon). As you serve more customers, new drinks join the menu: Adrak Chai with ginger, Elaichi Chai with cardamom, Masala Chai with both, and the strong Kadak Chai with a double portion of tea and sugar. Customers become less patient as the street gets busier, and up to three people queue at the same time. That makes your memory and your speed equally important.

Why chai matters

Tea arrived in India on a large scale in the nineteenth century, but it became a part of everyday life much later, when milk, sugar and spices made it the drink we know today. Today, chai is how people say hello, how a long journey pauses and how a business deal begins. A good tapri becomes a place where office workers, students, drivers and neighbours stand side by side. The simple routine of boiling water, adding the leaves, milk and sugar, and pouring from a height to cool the cup is something a good chaiwala does a few hundred times a day without thinking.

Tips for a high score

• Memorise the short recipes early. After a while, you will know Cutting Chai without reading it.
• Always look at the first customer, but glance at the patience bars of the others. If someone is almost out of patience, serve a quick recipe first when you can.
• Do not tap fast and carelessly. A mistake costs more time than a careful tap does.
• Reach 120 points to be a Local Favourite, 250 for Famous Chaiwala and 400 to be the Tapri Maharaja.

All the art, recipes and rules in this game are our own creations. It is a fun, friendly tribute to the chai culture that so many of us love, and it is free to play on any device.