Is Game-Based Learning Effective? 34 Studies

"It's just a game" is a reasonable worry to have about screen time somebody is calling educational. For chemistry, it is a tested question, with a larger evidence base than almost any other subject has.

Short answer: Yes, with conditions. In a 2022 meta-analysis of 34 chemistry studies, Hu and colleagues found students who learned through games outperforming peers on both immediate and delayed tests. The conditions matter: the player has to produce answers from memory, the feedback has to be where the player will read it, and the player has to see old material again on a schedule. A kid learns nothing from fun alone.

What have researchers found about games for chemistry?

The broadest answer is from Hu, Gallagher, Wouters, van der Schaaf, and Kester (2022), who pooled 34 experimental studies of game-based chemistry learning in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching. Students who learned through games did better than comparison groups on tests taken right after learning, and they were still ahead on delayed tests given days or weeks later, which is the result that matters for a cumulative course. The authors are careful about publication bias (the published effect could be bigger than the real one), so the defensible claim is directional. It's also specific to the territory: the most-studied topics in that pool were element names, symbols, and the periodic table, the exact facts a first-year student has to make automatic.

Are games better than just watching a good video?

In the closest head-to-head, yes. In 2024, Idika and Oluwaseyi compared three ways of teaching periodicity across six Nigerian secondary schools: a hands-on puzzle-game format, a video-led format with some interactive elements, and conventional teaching. On the test after the unit, the puzzle group led, the video group came second, and the conventionally taught group trailed; two weeks later, on a retention test, the groups were further apart in the same order. The students who manipulated the material held it better than the students who mostly watched richer material. That ordering fits what memory researchers keep finding: you build more memory by producing an answer than by recognizing one.

Kids, for what it's worth, call it the same way. When researchers in Tanzania asked 180 primary students how they best master multiplication tables, games and songs were first at 48%, ahead of every option their adults organize (Ndalu & Juma, 2024). A perception survey is no proof of effectiveness. It is a good sign of which practice a kid will actually come back to on a Tuesday.

What is the difference between a game a kid learns from and one they only enjoy?

Design choice	In a game a kid learns from	In a game a kid only enjoys
The core action	Produce the answer from memory	Recognize, tap, or watch
Feedback	Immediate, and on screen before the next move	Skippable or absent
What you see again	Old material, on a schedule	Whatever is in the level
Difficulty	Matched to the player's actual weak spots	One fixed ramp for everyone

The rows are straight out of the research. In a nine-course university field experiment, Bego and colleagues (2024) found the clearest quizzing benefits in the courses with produce-the-answer questions and feedback students actually saw, including both of the experiment's chemistry courses; the weakest results were in multiple-choice formats with unread feedback. And Hu and colleagues add a caution worth repeating to any parent evaluating an app: students in some studies enjoyed a game more while learning no more from it. Enjoyment is the delivery mechanism. The retrieval is the medicine. We built the element-recall games in Periodic Mole that way: play is fast, but you earn a useful action by answering a chemistry question, and we choose which elements to bring back in tomorrow's match from your review schedule.

Try it free. Bond Forge is free to play with a starter set of elements, no account needed. Full access is $59 for a year: every game and all 118 elements, with progress saved. No subscription.

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FAQ

Are educational games better than flashcards? They are for different halves of the problem. Flashcards are retrieval practice, and they are effective when someone actually keeps doing them; with a game, the repetitions are something a student returns to voluntarily. In the research, students managing their own flashcards tend to stop too early on hard items.

How much screen time on a learning game is worth it? Keep it short and regular rather than long and rare. The spacing research is on the side of brief retrieval sessions spread across days, and a ten-minute daily game is far closer to that than a Sunday marathon.

Are learning games effective for struggling students? The evidence is on the encouraging side: in the chemistry meta-analysis, students who started lower gained more in most of the studies where researchers looked at prior knowledge, and in a Swedish trial of timed fact practice, Östergren and colleagues found the strongest effects among the lowest-achieving profiles.

What should I look for in a chemistry learning game? Four things: the player has to produce answers rather than recognize them, feedback is immediate, the player sees old material again on a schedule, and the difficulty depends on what the player actually misses. A leaderboard is optional; those four are not.

Related

• Why Students Forget Chemistry So Fast
• Periodic Table Games: What to Play
• Is Competition Good for Learning?
• Element Symbols: Chemistry's Times Tables

Sources

• Hu, Y., Gallagher, T., Wouters, P., van der Schaaf, M., & Kester, L. (2022). Game-based learning has good chemistry with chemistry education: A three-level meta-analysis. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 59(9).
• Idika, M. I., & Oluwaseyi, M. P. (2024). The impact of puzzle game and video-based puzzle strategies on students' achievement and retention in periodicity. Journal of Mathematics and Science Teacher, 4(2).
• Ndalu, D. M., & Juma, Z. R. (2024). Factors influencing mastery of multiplication tables to pupils in selected Dodoma primary schools. Journal of Research Innovation and Implications in Education, 8(3).
• Bego, C. R., et al. (2024). Single-paper meta-analyses of the effects of spaced retrieval practice in nine introductory STEM courses. International Journal of STEM Education, 11:9.
• Östergren, R., et al. (2024). Memorization versus conceptual practice with number combinations. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 68(6).