Paco FunWorld (i12 Katong)

Paco FunWorld at i12 Katong is built around tickets, and it keeps yours between visits. Rather than handing you paper, staff bank what you win against your phone number, so a thin haul on one afternoon sits there and grows into something worth taking home on the next.

Much of the floor is given over to older-style redemption games — the sort that chatter out a run of tickets when you do well — and they feed a prize counter people actually clear. Around them sit claw machines, a Wangan Midnight racing cabinet and maimai. Skip the claws if you have come for prizes: their grip is the weak point here, and your credits go further on the ticket games, which is what pays for the counter anyway.

It works best for children up to about ten, and the staff are much of the reason why. They are quick to explain a machine and will tell you which games pay tickets most reliably. The floor is small, so on a Saturday afternoon the popular machines get camped on and nobody marshals a queue; a weekday after school gives you the run of it. The arcade is on level four of the mall on East Coast Road, a few minutes from Marine Parade station.