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At least five cafes islandwide, under The Mind Cafe and Settlers Cafe chains, are drawing daily between 50 and 100 youths who bond over Monopoly, Battle of the Sexes, Jenga and Taboo - among hundreds of games.
Settlers Cafe was first to set up shop. It opened an outlet on North Canal Road in 2003, and later added outlets at Holland Village and Katong.
The chain now attracts almost 100 people - from secondary school to tertiary institutions - on weekdays and nearly twice that number at weekends.
Teens are especially drawn to low-priced deals after school hours.
Between 2pm and 6pm on weekdays, Settlers offers 'Happy Hour' - for $6, students enjoy free flow of drinks and games.
The Mind Cafe's 'Happy Hour' is $5, and it even hosts a Ladies Night on Tuesdays when women get to play for free. But even without the deal, regular charges there are $2 per person per hour on weekdays and $2.50 on weekends.
The biggest draw for students is that they can play at the cafes in their uniforms. LAN gaming centres, by comparison, do not let in students wearing school uniforms.
'I like the fact that I can go in my school uniform. It's also cheaper and you can go any time after school, whereas you have to wait until 6pm to go LAN gaming,' said Bryan Toh, 16, a Secondary 4 student at Holy Innocents' High School.
Typically, customers select their board games, order food and drinks, then pay according to the time they spend there. The concept has even attracted avid video gamers like Mr Gary Lee, 24.
'With board games, there are actual human beings involved. The interaction makes the difference,' said Mr Lee, an engineering student at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) who visits Settlers Cafe around once a month.
Customers get to choose from a plethora of offerings. Settlers Cafe on North Canal Road has more than 400 different games, and at Holland Village about 150. Meanwhile, The Mind Cafe has 350 different board games at its Boat Quay branch and more than 200 at its Prinsep Street outlet. It plans to add another 500 games.
The idea is adapted from South Korea, where the first board-game cafe was set up in 2000. Today, there are about 250 cafes there, with more than 130 in Seoul alone.
Regulars here, like Katrina Fernandez, 18, go to The Mind Cafe on Prinsep Street at least once a month.
'It's a good way to bond with friends rather than shopping,' said Katrina, who is about to start at NTU.
Some customers like the games so much that they wind up buying them.
Mr Stanley Cheng, 25, who started going to Settlers Cafe as a university student, continues to go to its Holland Village branch.
There, he tried out Guillotine, a French Revolution-inspired card game, and Taboo, which involves describing something without using words commonly associated with it, which he then bought.
He and his friends even worked out a sequence on which games to play first.
'We usually start with a fast-reaction game like Halli Galli to get everyone on a high. Then we move on to a short thinking game, and then end with a long game,' said Mr Cheng, an engineer.
In fact, many customers do follow a predictable order, says The Mind Cafe owner Alvin Tan, 36. 'For some reason, a balancing game seems to be a favourite for ending the session,' he said.
'When we see a group playing Jenga or Hamster Roll, we know that they are probably going to ask for the bill soon!'
Additional reporting by Zach Pestana
Top 5 games
HERE are the five most requested games at The Mind Cafe and Settlers Cafe.
In this strategy game, players try to take over the whole of Catan by building settlements, roads, buildings, all with the roll of the dice.
Players take on the role of dwarves mining for gold, but one of the players is the saboteur who will try to prevent the other players from getting gold.
In a game much like Snap, players each have a deck of cards and reveal them one at a time. When five of the same fruit appear, the first person to slap them gets the cards. The winner is the player with the thickest deck of cards.
Players have to describe a word on a card without using that word or the other words listed on the card. The opposing team will buzz that player if he/she makes a mistake.
Men are pitted against women in trying to guess how members of the opposite sex will answer certain questions.
GAME CHARGES
