I turned a viral rooftop chappal fight into a browser game
A reel went round asking what the game should be called. It already had rules. Nobody had bothered to write them down, so I did, and then I built it.
Two days, start to finish. A few years ago this was a month of evenings.
Play it here: chappal-maar.sandcastlelab.com
Last week a reel did the rounds. Two gangs of lads on a rooftop, hurling chappals at each other, ducking behind floral mattresses held up like riot shields. Absolute commitment. No referee, no scoreboard, and nobody in that video looking even slightly confused about what to do next.
The caption asked what the game should be called.
I think that was the wrong question. Watch it twice and you notice something better.
It already had rules. Nobody had written them down.
You start with the two chappals on your own feet. You can only carry two at a time, so when you run out you have to go and fetch, usually while someone is aiming at you. One man holds the mattress and shuffles it around to cover whoever needs it most, which makes him the most important player and the biggest target on the roof. Take him out and the shield goes down for good.
Nobody agreed any of that. It just emerged, the way street games do, and then it held.
So I built it.
Chappal Maar
Three a side, rooftop dodgeball, except the ball is footwear.
There are ten roofs, each with its own trouble. A washing line strung across the middle that swings in the wind, so a lob gets caught in someone’s laundry. A floodlit roof with a temperamental generator that cuts out mid-throw. A monsoon roof where the floor is slick and the chappals skid. A wedding night where baskets of them rain down on the court. And one enormous chappal, sitting mid-court on the Eid roof, which flattens a mattress and takes out three people at once, assuming you can hit anything with it.
Those roofs are my daughter Olivia’s. She designed the levels and play-tested every one of them, which is why they get properly hard rather than just faster. I built the engine. She built the game you actually play.
It plays on a phone. That was the whole point. It is a rooftop game, so it should work standing on a rooftop.
Two days, start to finish. A few years ago this was a month of evenings, and I would have talked myself out of it somewhere around evening four.
That is the bit I keep thinking about. Not the game. The gap between seeing a thing and having the thing.
Go and play it
chappal-maar.sandcastlelab.com. Nothing to install, works on your phone, takes about ninety seconds to learn.
Fair warning. Hardly anyone gets past the third roof.