Exploring the Concept of Abstracting and Visualizing Formal Logic Proofs in Games Development and Evaluation of Gentzen’s Quest

Abstract

The subject addressed in this thesis is the evaluation of the concept behind the game Gentzen’s Quest, but also to present Gentzen’s Quest. The intent behind the concept is to explore a new abstraction level via graphics for doing formal logic proofs targeted towards the general populace. A pre-study was made which concluded this concept was original. The priority in making Gentzen’s Quest was to make it easily understandable when interacting (i.e very little prior knowledge should be needed to advance in the game) and fun as to encourage the player to continue. A simple user-testing study was made to evaluate this, and the conclusion reached was that there is potential for further development and it was a working game concept. However a few parts of the game, namely those introducing rules and concepts in formal logic proofs, were difficult to abstract and consequently hard to understand by users as well as enjoy. An essential part of the game concept is that it corresponds to proof construction in formal logic. The connection between the graphical abstraction and the formal logic is presented and argued for in the thesis.