SUMIntroducing Slice Rush: The Pizza Game That Teaches Fractions, Percentages and Giving Change
Ask an adult which bit of primary maths they still find awkward and a surprising number will say fractions. Ask a kid to split a pizza fairly between four people and they will do it without blinking. The maths is the same. The pizza just makes sense in a way that a number on a page does not.
That gap is the whole idea behind our new game. Slice Rush is the fourth free game in the Sumburst Arcade, and it puts your kid behind the counter of a busy pizzeria where every order is a fraction and every customer needs the right change.
How a shift works
A customer walks up and a ticket prints. It might say 3/4 pizza, or 75% of a pizza, or on a tricky night 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8. Your job is to read it, then build it.
You pick up the dough and tap, or swipe, across exactly the right slices of an eight slice pizza. Six of eight for three quarters. Then you add the toppings the customer asked for, one tap per slice, and hit serve. Nothing lands on the pizza unless you put it there, which sounds like a small detail but changes everything: the child is physically making three quarters, not selecting it from a list.
Then comes the part we are quietly proud of. The customer pays, and you have to settle up. Cash customers hand over a note and need exact change counted out in real coins: a ten and a fifty and a twenty, until the amount owing hits zero. Card customers need the exact total keyed into a terminal, right to left, the way a real card machine works.
It gets harder, on purpose
The first few customers are gentle. Halves, quarters, a single topping, change from a five. Then the shift picks up.
Fussy customers start asking for double or triple portions, so a ticket marked x2 wants two rounds of pepperoni on every slice. Rush hour puts a second customer in the queue with their own timer ticking. Coupons appear, and this is where it gets genuinely useful: the ticket shows a subtotal and 25% off, and the amount to charge is left for the player to work out. If they get stuck, the register has a Show working button that spells out the discount in dollars and leaves the subtraction to them.
Later still, the kitchen starts cutting pizzas into twelfths instead of eighths. That single change opens up thirds and sixths, so orders like 2/3, 5/6 and 7/12 arrive, and a child who is comfortable with halves and quarters has to think properly about what a third of twelve slices actually is.
There is a grease meter too, because a bench gets messy. Scrape a slice or burn a pizza and it creeps up, and when it fills you cannot serve anything until you wipe the tray down. It costs seconds rather than hearts, and the mess is always the player's own doing, which we think is the fair way to build panic into a game.
What it actually teaches
Slice Rush covers more ground than it looks:
- Fractions, including equivalence. After twenty minutes a child knows in their hands that 3/4 and 6/8 and 75% are the same thing.
- Thirds and sixths, once twelve slice pizzas arrive.
- Percentages of amounts, through the coupon orders.
- Money and giving change, with real notes and coins.
- Mental subtraction under a little pressure, which is the skill that makes shop counters and restaurant bills feel easy later on.
Coins earned in the pizzeria buy new toppings and kitchen upgrades: a faster oven, comfier seats so customers wait longer, a register that occasionally suggests the change. There is a goals board that unlocks new restaurant looks as you hit milestones, and a daily challenge that gives every player the same seeded run, so a family can compare scores fairly.
New as well: printable worksheets, grades 1 to 12
Screens are not the whole answer, and we have never pretended otherwise. So alongside the game we have opened a worksheet library covering grade 1 through grade 12, from counting to twenty all the way up to differentiation. Every sheet is a printable PDF with an answer key.
You can browse and preview the entire library without an account, sorted by grade with a topic filter and a search box. Create a free account and the starter pack is yours to download. Members get the lot.
Why sign up today
Everything we make runs in the browser. Nothing to install, nothing to update, and no ads anywhere on the site. You can play Slice Rush right now without an account and see whether it clicks.
A free account is worth making, though, because it is what makes progress stick. Your best score, your unlocked toppings and your goals follow you from one device to another, so a run started on the family laptop carries on from a tablet. It unlocks the free worksheet pack. And it gives parents and teachers a view of how things are actually going, which topics are landing and which ones keep tripping them up.
Apex Champion, at ten dollars, removes the daily play limits across all four arcade games and opens the full worksheet library along with the rest of the learning tools. No card is needed to start, and the free tier is a real product rather than a demo.
Go and play a shift. Read the ticket, build the slices, count the change, and see how long you last.