Ratio Riddles

Making Maths an Adventure

Minecraft Education and Cambridge University's Faculty of Mathematics wanted to transform how students experience proportional reasoning. Ratios, fractions, and scale factors are foundational mathematical concepts — but too often taught abstractly.

The challenge: create a Minecraft world that would make these concepts tangible, progressive, and genuinely fun — while meeting both Common Core and UK National Curriculum standards.

Three Stories, One Mathematical Journey

We designed Ratio Riddles as three interconnected story adventures set within an ancient temple. Each story introduces new mathematical concepts while building on what came before, creating a natural learning progression from basic ratio notation to complex multi-step problems.

Teachers can explore all three games in a single session for a quick ratio skills review, or build an entire unit around the experience — using it to introduce these concepts for the first time.

Three Story Adventures

Story 1: Potion Commotion

Mix different ratios of ingredients to create increasingly powerful potions, then use them to dive for coins in the mystical well. Teaches ratio notation, visual representation, and part-to-whole relationships.

Story 2: Window Wiz

Design stained glass windows for the ancient temple and scale designs up and down while maintaining proportions. Teaches understanding and applying scale factors.

Story 3: Keep Off the Grass

Place rods representing different fractions to rescue stranded students. Solve complex multi-step ratio problems combining fractions with proportional reasoning.

Inside the Temple

Global Reach, Cambridge Quality

Ratio Riddles is available in over 20 languages, making it one of the most widely accessible Minecraft Education maths resources in the world. Cambridge Mathematics hosts its own dedicated landing page for the project, including downloadable resources for each story.

The project was featured on the Microsoft Education blog for Pi Day 2025 and has been adopted by mathematics educators across multiple countries as a go-to resource for teaching proportional reasoning.

Upon completing all three stories, students celebrate in a graduation ceremony where Cambridge Mathematics professors acknowledge their achievements — connecting game success to real academic accomplishment.

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