What Happened to the Collisions Chemistry Game
8 min read
Short answer: PlayMada Games, which made the free chemistry game Collisions, ceased operations on June 30, 2022. The games were left free, but the site now sits behind a browser security warning that blocks most people. This guide covers what Collisions was, whether you can still reach it, and what else is out there.
If you taught with Collisions, you already know why people are asking. It earned a devoted following in chemistry classrooms, and then the company behind it wound down. This is the story, as far as we can tell.
What was the Collisions chemistry game?
Collisions was a suite of eight free games in which the rules of the game are the rules of chemistry. Instead of answering quiz questions, students built things: they placed protons and electrons to assemble atoms, shared valence pairs to form covalent bonds, stacked ions into compounds, and added or removed energy to drive a phase change. The eight games covered Atoms, Ions, Covalent Bonding, Ionic Bonding, Intermolecular Forces, Acids and Bases, Phase Change, and Equilibrium.
The design made the invisible particle level something a student could see, touch, and get wrong safely. Most chemistry software still just shows you a diagram. A teacher's job in early chemistry is to move kids from "I memorized it" to "I can picture it," and that jump is what Collisions was built for. It ran in a browser and on tablets, rostered through Google Classroom and Clever, and came with a teacher dashboard and a library of lesson plans.
What did teachers use it for?
Its real strength was flexibility. Teachers slotted it in wherever they had a gap: as a guided-inquiry hook to launch a topic, as review before a test, as homework or summer pre-work for incoming students. Its most-loved role showed up during remote learning, when it stood in for a lab that teachers could no longer run in person.
Tina Masciangioli, a high school teacher in Falls Church, Virginia, put the appeal plainly on ChemEd X: "I had one student who loved Collisions so much he worked on the rest of the topics on his own."
It was not frictionless. Common Sense Education's review praised the design but flagged that some puzzles came down to trial and error, and that students could get stuck without a teacher nearby to keep the struggle productive. That is worth knowing before you send a class in alone.
Is Collisions still available?
Barely, and only if you go out of your way. When PlayMada closed, they left the games free rather than switching them off, and for a while they still loaded. As of mid-2026, the game at app.playmada.com has an expired security certificate: most browsers now stop you with a full-page "Your connection is not private" warning before the page will load. Reaching Collisions means knowingly clicking past a security block, which is not something to ask of anyone, and certainly not of students.
So treat Collisions as gone in practice. The old marketing site, playmadagames.com, is already offline; the community forum PlayMada pointed teachers to has gone quiet; and now the game itself is walled off behind a browser warning, with nobody left to renew the certificate. If it still opens for you today, it is on borrowed time.
What can teachers use instead of Collisions?
Nothing free is a drop-in replacement, because Collisions was an unusual thing: a scored, leveled game built on the rules of chemistry. What teachers use instead falls into three buckets, and it helps to know which is which, because none of them is a game the way Collisions was.
| Tool | What it is |
|---|---|
| PhET Interactive Simulations | Free simulations to explore one concept at a time |
| ChemCollective (Carnegie Mellon) | Browser-based virtual labs and stoichiometry practice |
| AACT games (ACS) | Free classroom games and puzzles by topic |
| Periodic Mole | A game that starts at the periodic table and climbs into the rest of chemistry |
PhET, from the University of Colorado Boulder, is the one most teachers open first, and deservedly. Its Build a Molecule and Molecule Shapes sims are free, research-based, and trusted everywhere. One thing to know going in: PhET ships its sims with no in-app instructions on purpose, on the research finding that students ignore them, so a student dropped in cold has nothing telling them what to do, and you bring the direction with a worksheet. It is a superb simulation built for open exploration.
ChemCollective, from Carnegie Mellon, runs virtual labs for simulated wet-lab work and stoichiometry. The lab was rebuilt in HTML5, so it works in any modern browser; the interface looks its age, and a few older pages on the site still expect the long-retired Java plug-in, but the core labs are solid. Introduce it with a quick demo and students find their way.
AACT, the American Association of Chemistry Teachers, hosts a small set of free browser games (a periodic-table guessing game, a chemistry escape room) that anyone can play without an account. They are standards-aligned classroom activities more than designed games, but they are free and quick to drop into a lesson.
None of these is a game the way Collisions was: a scored challenge you win by getting the chemistry right. They are simulations, labs, and activities. That is the gap Collisions filled.
Where Periodic Mole fits
That gap is where Periodic Mole sits, built for the thing Collisions' fans wanted: chemistry that plays like a game. In Bond Forge and the games beside it, you cannot take your turn until you answer a chemistry question right, and the game deals you the next one at exactly your level, one small step above what you have already mastered. The difficulty climbs so gently you never feel the water heating up. The periodic table is only the first rung. From the elements, the ladder climbs through reading formulas, bonding, the mole, and stoichiometry, one concept at a time. Bond Forge and Pt Paddle are free to play with no sign-up, though the free versions run a few elements and don't save progress.
Here is the part a teacher feels first. Nobody became a chemistry teacher to spend September drilling thirty kids on the fact that Na is sodium. They came to teach the reactions, the why, the parts of chemistry that are genuinely beautiful. When students walk in already fluent in the fundamentals, the multiplication tables of chemistry, two things change at once: the teacher gets to teach the subject they love instead of grinding basics, and the students can follow along, because a formula on the board is no longer a wall. The class gets better for both sides of the room.
Collisions was a deep particle-simulation sandbox with a rostered teacher dashboard, a different kind of tool. What we share is the thing that made it worth missing: the chemistry is the game, not a quiz with points bolted on.
If you want a chemistry game your students can open and play right now, this is ours:
Try it free. Bond Forge is free to play with a starter set of elements, no account needed. One payment of $59 unlocks every game and all 118 elements, with progress saved. No subscription.
FAQ
Is Collisions still available? In practice, no. PlayMada left the games free when it closed in 2022, but the site at app.playmada.com now has an expired security certificate, so most browsers block it with a "your connection is not private" warning. Reaching it means knowingly bypassing a security block, which isn't worth doing.
Is the Collisions chemistry game free? It was always free, and PlayMada left it free when they closed. The problem now is access, not cost: an expired security certificate means most browsers refuse to load it.
What happened to PlayMada Games? PlayMada Games ceased operations on June 30, 2022. The company did not state a public reason. Its founder still runs a sister education company, CanFigureIt Geometry, so the parent brand continues; it is the Collisions product that was retired.
What is the best free alternative to Collisions? It depends what you want, and none of them is a game the way Collisions was. PhET has free simulations, ChemCollective has virtual labs, AACT has free classroom games, and Periodic Mole is a game that starts at the periodic table and climbs into the rest of chemistry. Pick by the job you need done, not by which one claims to replace Collisions.
Can I still use Collisions in my classroom? Realistically, no. The games are still hosted, but the expired security certificate makes browsers block the site, and it is a bad idea to train students to click past security warnings. Treat it as retired and use something maintained.
Related
- Free chemistry printables for teachers
- The best interactive periodic table (and how to pick one)
- Periodic table games that make the elements stick
- What every element looks like (and where you’ll see it)
Sources
- PlayMada Games, Collisions FAQ and shutdown notice (k12.playmada.com/faqs). Company closure date, "free to all educators and students" pledge, and the eight games. Current-state access (the expired-certificate block) is from direct observation, mid-2026.
- ChemEd X, "Collisions: Chemistry Learning Games" (chemedx.org). Teacher use and the Tina Masciangioli quote.
- Common Sense Education, review of Collisions (commonsense.org). Basis for the design praise and the "trial and error / needs teacher support" caveat. Common Sense wound down its edtech review program in early 2026 and removed the page, so the review is cited from cached copies rather than a live link.
- PhET Interactive Simulations, University of Colorado Boulder (phet.colorado.edu), including PhET's guidance that its sims ship without in-app instructions.
- ChemCollective (chemcollective.org); American Association of Chemistry Teachers games (teachchemistry.org).