August 3, 2026
Building Critical Mass
Why JabMed Media’s second game is science hangman with Fact Cards — and how Protocol Charts became the lab’s classified floor plan.
Critical Mass is the second free browser game from JabMed Media: guess a science term before a lab reaction hits critical mass.
Why not “Plankwalk in a lab coat”?
Plankwalk proved a house formula works — short sessions, a clear fail ladder, mobile play, optional daily. A pure reskin would feel thin. Critical Mass keeps the hangman DNA but changes what a miss means (risk meter / containment) and adds a Fact Card after every round so the science audience gets a real learning beat.
What ships
- Classic mode + Daily Hypothesis (UTC-seeded word)
- Curated terms with a Fact Card after every round
- Hint and Solvent power-ups, local reagents and lab log
- Cinematic chamber stills as risk rises
- Protocol Charts — the lab floor plan you ink by playing
Play free: Critical Mass. Catalog: game page.
Pirate fans: Plankwalk and The Chart Room.
Protocol Charts
The Chart Room already inks treasure maps. A second Sudoku voyage in a lab coat would have split Critical Mass. Protocol Charts is a piece of the lab, not a second game.
The classified floor plan sits on the main menu. You fill it with the verbs you already came to do:
- Solvent Bench (4 plates) — Classic wins
- Half-Life (6 plates) — first Daily Hypothesis win that UTC day
- Core Assembly (6 plates) — a clean run (zero or one miss)
Tap a wing to see the scrap. Finish all sixteen plates and this device stamps Isotope (jabmed-studio-v1). Same studio handshake as Cartographer in Plankwalk — no shared wallet.
The hangman stays the game. The atlas is why you open the lab tomorrow.