PTCG-Bench is a new benchmark that uses the Pokémon Trading Card Game to evaluate large language model (LLM) agents on two fronts: their decision‑making within a single complex game environment and their capacity to evolve through accumulated experience. The benchmark includes a modular harness ablation to isolate agent performance from model capability. Experiments show that while LLM agents can achieve non‑trivial gameplay, sustained self‑evolution remains difficult and performance depends on harness design.
By Dongdong Hua, Yifei Sun, Renhong Huang, Feng Gao, Chunping Wang, Yang Yang
arXiv:2506. 16995v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Proficient game agents with diverse play styles enrich the gaming experience and enhance the replay value of games.
By Lingfeng Li, Yunlong Lu, Yongyi Wang, Wenxin Li
The paper explores a runtime strategy-selection framework where a large language model (LLM) guides a pre‑trained reinforcement learning (RL) policy for non‑player characters (NPCs) in a Unity combat game without altering the underlying policy. Five NPC agents sharing a PPO policy were compared in a baseline setup and an LLM‑augmented setup, where a locally hosted Mistral 7B model assigns one of four tactical tags every five seconds based on live game state. Across 600 episodes against three scripted opponents, the LLM‑augmented agents more than doubled their win rate against a Balanced opponent, improved performance against an Evasive opponent, but struggled against an Aggressive opponent due to over‑reliance on encirclement; analysis of 2,430 strategy selections revealed limited zero‑shot differentiation with the model favoring Surround in 83.8% of cases.
By Hrithika Deepu Nair, Kayvan Karim
arXiv:2607. 00190v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Recent advances in reinforcement learning have produced superhuman agents across a wide range of competitive games.
By Andrzej Bia{\l}ecki, Adam Mastalerz, Han Zhou
arXiv:2606. 10389v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent advances in LLM-driven code evolution have enabled automated discovery by iteratively generating and improving programs.
By Haoran Li, Zengle Ge, Ziyang Zhang, Xiaomin Yuan, Yui Lo, Qianhui Liu, Bocheng An, Dongke Rong, Jiaqun Liu, Annan Li, Jianmin Wu, Dawei Yin, Dou Shen
arXiv:2503. 13077v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Multi-agent reinforcement learning has shown promise in learning cooperative behaviors in team-based environments.
By Amir Baghi, Jens Sj\"olund, Joakim Bergdahl, Linus Gissl\'en, Alessandro Sestini
Game Arena is an open, continuously expanding platform that evaluates large language models through competitive games, allowing head‑to‑head matchups in structured environments. Unlike static benchmarks, it prevents performance saturation by increasing gameplay difficulty as models improve. The report outlines the infrastructure and presents three pilot games—Chess, Poker, and Werewolf—covering perfect information, imperfect information, and multiplayer settings, and details evaluation metrics and competition results.
By Bovard Doerschuk-Tiberi, Yao Yan, Justin Chiu, Hann Wang, Timothy Chung, Martyna Plomecka, John Schultz, Jon Lipovetz, Clayton Drazner, Yuchen Zhuang, Jaimie Hwang, Nate Keating, Riley Jones, Andrew Lee, Oran Kelly, Ian Gemp, Michael Aaron, Laurel Prince, Kate Larson, Jeff Moser, Harrison Jobe, Chad Woodford, Siqi Liu, Andrew Wang, Bo Chang, Christopher D'Mello, Diane Chaleff, Addison Howard, Johnny Yip, Chuck Sugnet, Antonio Gulli, Meghan O'Connell, Will Cukierski, Nenad Tomasev, Dima Yeroshenko, Kinjal Parekh, Roxanne Daniel, Marc Lanctot, Domino Weir, Elsa Dong, Daniel Hennes, Melissa Nalubwama, Robert Fraser, Ryan Trostle, Jun Peng, Tom Mason, Lloyd Hightower, Chiamaka Chukwuka, Yuexiang Zhai, Phoebe Kirk, Yi Su, Yuting Han, Jie Ren, Chris Prichard, Sahand Sharifzadeh, Karim Hakimzadeh, DJ Sterling, Meg Risdal, Kate Olszewska, Ya Xu, Orhan Firat, Minmin Chen
arXiv:2606. 26267v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Rating systems such as Elo serve as the gold standard for matchmaking in competitive chess.
By Tianyuan Zhou, Zhizheng Fu, Tianming Yang
arXiv:2609.37447v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: How strong can an AlphaZero-style chess system become under limited training compute when its entire learning loop is engineered for efficiency? We t...
By Bertil Braun
arXiv:2605. 28390v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Test-time skill evolving is regarded as a new paradigm for enhancing deployed agentic systems.
By Xujun Li, Kehan Zheng, Mingyuan Zhao, Yize Geng, Jinfeng Zhou, Qi Zhu, Fei Mi, Lifeng Shang, Minlie Huang, Hongning Wang
arXiv:2607. 27574v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Activation steering has emerged in large language models as a lightweight alternative for dynamically changing a model's behavior at inference time.
By Yoann Poupart, Aur\'elie Beynier, Nicolas Maudet
arXiv:2608. 09128v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: LLM agents are increasingly deployed in multi-agent social settings where they must cooperate, negotiate, and adapt to other agents.
By Keyu He, Xuhui Zhou, Maarten Sap