Many analysis and verifications tasks, such as static program analyses and model-checking for temporal logics, reduce to the solution of systems of equations over suitable lattices. Inspired by recent work on lattice-theoretic progress measures, we develop a game-theoretical approach to the solution of systems of monotone equations over lattices, where for each single equation either the least or greatest solution is taken. A simple parity game, referred to as fixpoint game, is defined that provides a correct and complete characterisation of the solution of systems of equations over continuous lattices, a quite general class of lattices widely used in semantics. For powerset lattices the fixpoint game is intimately connected with classical parity games for µ-calculus model-checking, whose solution can exploit as a key tool Jurdziński’s small progress measures. We show how the notion of progress measure can be naturally generalised to fixpoint games over continuous lattices and we prove the existence of small progress measures. Our results lead to a constructive formulation of progress measures as (least) fixpoints. We refine this characterisation by introducing the notion of selection that allows one to constrain the plays in the parity game, enabling an effective (and possibly efficient) solution of the game, and thus of the associated verification problem. We also propose a logic for specifying the moves of the existential player that can be used to systematically derive simplified equations for efficiently computing progress measures. We discuss potential applications to the model-checking of latticed µ-calculi.

Behavioural equivalences can be characterized via bisimulations, modal logics and spoiler-defender games. In this paper we review these three perspectives in a coalgebraic setting, which allows us to generalize from the particular branching type of a transition system. We are interested in qualitative notions (classical bisimulation) as well as quantitative notions (bisimulation metrics). Our first contribution is to introduce a spoiler-defender bisimulation game for coalgebras in the classical case. Second, we introduce such games for the metric case and furthermore define a real-valued modal coalgebraic logic, from which we can derive the strategy of the spoiler. For this logic we show a quantitative version of the Hennessy-Milner theorem.