Game-Playing Agents

Ask about this topic

Overview

Game-playing agents study how AI can perceive game states, plan actions, and adapt to opponents, providing testbeds for decision-making under competition, uncertainty, and long time horizons. Common approaches include tree search and Monte Carlo Tree Search, self-play reinforcement learning, regret minimization for imperfect-information games, and language- or vision-language models equipped with memory, tools, and learned world models. Evaluation spans bounded games such as chess and Go, poker and social deduction, real-time strategy, and interactive video games, using measures such as win rate, exploitability, task progress, and performance against people. Specialized systems can be highly capable in defined settings, while broad generalization remains difficult: agents still struggle with visual grounding, reliable memory, opponent modeling, and timely action in unfamiliar or long-running games.

Latest papers

CardsList

206 papers36 papers in the last four weeks, up 50% on the four weeks before. 0.2% of all new papers.

  1. Neuromorphic Control for 3D Navigation in Minecraft Using Genetic Algorithms

    May 4, 2026Eric ZiporGame-Playing AgentsNeuroevolution

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

  2. How Personas Can Influence Agents to Play Split or Steal

    May 3, 2026Carlos Leon, Alexandre Rodrigues, Pedro Gamito +1Game-Playing AgentsLLM Agent Evaluation

    Universidade Lusófona, Portugal · Universitat de Barcelona, Spain · Université Paris Cité, France +1

  3. Interpretable experiential learning based on state history and global feedback

    May 1, 2026Anton KoloninReinforcement LearningGame-Playing Agents

    The Artificial Intelligence Research Center, Novosibirsk State University, Russia · Aigents, Russia

  4. StratFormer: Adaptive Opponent Modeling and Exploitation in Imperfect-Information Games

    Apr 28, 2026Andy Caen, Mark H. M. Winands, Dennis J. N. J. SoemersOpponent ModelingGame-Playing Agents

    Department of Advanced Computing Sciences, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

  5. Don't Make the LLM Read the Graph: Make the Graph Think

    Apr 24, 2026Yuqi Sun, Tianqin Meng, George Liu +4Multi-Agent CoordinationGame-Playing Agents

    Mindoverflow · University of Waterloo · Carnegie Mellon University +4

  6. Nemobot Games: Crafting Strategic AI Gaming Agents for Interactive Learning with Large Language Models

    Apr 23, 2026Chee Wei Tan, Yuchen Wang, Shangxin GuoGame-Playing AgentsLLM Agents

    Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Nanyang Ave., Singapore · Nautilus Software Technologies Limited, Hong Kong.

  7. Co-Evolving LLM Decision and Skill Bank Agents for Long-Horizon Tasks

    Apr 22, 2026Xiyang Wu, Zongxia Li, Guangyao Shi +5Continual Learning for LLM AgentsGame-Playing Agents

    University of Maryland · University of Southern California · Good Start Labs +2

  8. Trust, Lies, and Long Memories: Emergent Social Dynamics and Reputation in Multi-Round Avalon with LLM Agents

    Apr 22, 2026Suveen EllawelaMulti-Agent LLM SystemsGame-Playing Agents

    National University of Singapore

  9. Quantum Frog: Emergent Cooperation and Difficulty Scaling in a Quantized-Time Cooperative Game

    Apr 22, 2026Saad MankariousMulti-Agent CoordinationGame-Playing Agents

  10. Revac: A Social Deduction Reasoning Agent

    Apr 21, 2026Mihir Shriniwas Arya, Avinash Anish, Aditya RanjanGame-Playing AgentsSocial Deduction Games

    Department of Computer Science and Engineering RV College of Engineering Bangalore · Department of Information Science and Engineering RV College of Engineering Bangalore · Department of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning RV College of Engineering Bangalore

  11. Study and Improvement of Search Algorithms in Multi-Player Perfect-Information Games

    Apr 19, 2026Quentin Cohen-SolalGame-Playing AgentsTree Search

    LAMSADE, Universit´e Paris-Dauphine, PSL, CNRS, Paris, France

  12. M2-PALE: A Framework for Explaining Multi-Agent MCTS--Minimax Hybrids via Process Mining and LLMs

    Apr 16, 2026Yiyu Qian, Liyuan Zhao, Tim MillerExplainable Artificial IntelligenceGame-Playing Agents

    RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia · University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92617, USA · University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia

  13. InfoChess: A Game of Adversarial Inference and a Laboratory for Quantifiable Information Control

    Apr 15, 2026Kieran A. MurphyImperfect-Information GamesGame-Playing Agents

    New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, United States

  14. MindGames Arena Generalization Track: In2AI Solution with Delayed Per-Step Reward Attribution

    Apr 13, 2026Aliaksei Korshuk, Alexander Buyantuev, Ilya MakarovRL for Game AIRL for Language Models

    iMak AI Lab · Coframe

  15. Mastering PokeGym: Graph-Guided Multimodal Evolution at Test Time

    Apr 9, 2026Ruizhi Zhang, Ye Huang, Yuangang Pan +5Game-Playing AgentsMultimodal Agents

    Shenzhen Institute for Advanced Study, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China · A*STAR · College of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Shenzhen University

  16. CivBench: Progress-Based Evaluation for LLMs' Strategic Decision-Making in Civilization V

    Apr 9, 2026John Chen, Sihan Cheng, Can Gurkan +1LLM Agent EvaluationAI Agent Benchmarks

    Northwestern University

  17. GameWorld: Towards Standardized and Verifiable Evaluation of Multimodal Game Agents

    Apr 8, 2026Mingyu Ouyang, Siyuan Hu, Kevin Qinghong Lin +2AI Agent EvaluationAI Agent Benchmarks

    National University of Singapore · University of Oxford

  18. LUDOBENCH: Evaluating LLM Behavioural Decision-Making Through Spot-Based Board Game Scenarios in Ludo

    Apr 7, 2026Ojas Jain, Dhruv KumarLLM Agent EvaluationStrategic Reasoning Risks in Language Models

    Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, BITS Pilani

  19. Reproducing AlphaZero on Tablut: Self-Play RL for an Asymmetric Board Game

    Apr 7, 2026Tõnis Lees, Tambet MatiisenGame-Playing AgentsSelf-Play RL

    Institute of Computer Science, University of Tartu

  20. Competition and Cooperation of LLM Agents in Games

    Apr 1, 2026Jiayi Yao, Cong Chen, Baosen ZhangLLM AgentsMulti-Agent LLM Systems

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle. · Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College.

  21. Tracking vs. Deciding: The Dual-Capability Bottleneck in Searchless Chess Transformers

    Mar 31, 2026Quanhao Li, Wei JiangInstance ReweightingGame-Playing Agents

    Abbey Park High School · Shanghai Soong Ching Ling School

  22. Completeness of Unbounded Best-First Minimax and Descent Minimax

    Mar 25, 2026Quentin Cohen-SolalGame-Playing AgentsTree Search

    LAMSADE, Université Paris-Dauphine, PSL, CNRS, Paris, France

  23. GameplayQA: A Benchmarking Framework for Decision-Dense POV-Synced Multi-Video Understanding of 3D Virtual Agents

    Mar 25, 2026Yunzhe Wang, Runhui Xu, Kexin Zheng +4AI Agent BenchmarksEgocentric Video QA

    University of Southern California

  24. Self-Evolving Multi-Agent Framework for Efficient Decision Making in Real-Time Strategy Scenarios

    Mar 25, 2026Li Ma, Hao Peng, Yiming Wang +6Game-Playing AgentsSelf-Evolving Agents

    School of Cyber Science and Technology, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China · Naval Aviation University, Yantai 264001, China · Military Science Academy, Beijing 100091, China +3

  25. GTO Wizard Benchmark

    Mar 24, 2026Marc-Antoine Provost, Nejc Ilenic, Christopher Solinas +1Agent BenchmarksGame-Playing Agents

    GTO Wizard

  26. Minibal: Balanced Game-Playing Without Opponent Modeling

    Mar 24, 2026Quentin Cohen-Solal, Tristan CazenaveGame-Playing AgentsHuman-AI Interaction

    LAMSADE, Universit´e Paris-Dauphine, PSL, CNRS, Paris, France

  27. Bitboard version of Tetris AI

    Mar 24, 2026Xingguo Chen, Pingshou Xiong, Zhenyu Luo +6Game-Playing AgentsRL Benchmarks

    School of Computer Science, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing, Jiangsu, 210023, China

  28. Sensi: Learn One Thing at a Time -- Curriculum-Based Test-Time Learning for LLM Game Agents

    Mar 18, 2026Mohsen ArjmandiLLM AgentsGame-Playing Agents

    Independent Researcher (CTO, evolutionID)

  29. ShuttleEnv: An Interactive Data-Driven RL Environment for Badminton Strategy Modeling

    Mar 18, 2026Ang Li, Xinyang Gong, Bozhou Chen +5Game-Playing AgentsReinforcement Learning

    School of Computer Science, Peking University · Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Peking University

  30. How Clued up are LLMs? Evaluating Multi-Step Deductive Reasoning in a Text-Based Game Environment

    Mar 17, 2026Rebecca Ansell, Autumn Toney-WailsFine-Tuning Language ModelsLLM Agent Evaluation

    Department of Computer Science, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA · Syntheos, Corp; UNU-Merit, Maastricht, NL