mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

TextWorldExpress: Simulating Text Games at One Million Steps Per Second

arXiv 2208.01174 ↗First posted 1 Aug 2022cs.CL cs.AIcited by 12

Not on the map. Why?

Abstract (arXiv)

Text-based games offer a challenging test bed to evaluate virtual agents at language understanding, multi-step problem-solving, and common-sense reasoning. However, speed is a major limitation of current text-based games, capping at 300 steps per second, mainly due to the use of legacy tooling. In this work we present TextWorldExpress, a high-performance simulator that includes implementations of three common text game benchmarks that increases simulation throughput by approximately three orders of magnitude, reaching over one million steps per second on common desktop hardware. This significantly reduces experiment runtime, enabling billion-step-scale experiments in about one day.

Key facts. Cited by 12 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 31 of its 40 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 1 Aug 2022.

Builds on

31 of 40 references.

References · 31

  1. 2018BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understandingcited by 40,204
  2. 2020ALFWorld: Aligning Text and Embodied Environments for Interactive Learningcited by 1,143
  3. 2016ConceptNet 5.5: An Open Multilingual Graph of General Knowledgecited by 1,065
  4. 2017AI2-THOR: An Interactive 3D Environment for Visual AIcited by 850
  5. 2019ALFRED: A Benchmark for Interpreting Grounded Instructions for Everyday Taskscited by 773
  6. 2018TextWorld: A Learning Environment for Text-based Gamescited by 304
  7. 2022ScienceWorld: Is your Agent Smarter than a 5th Grader?cited by 298
  8. 2019MineRL: A Large-Scale Dataset of Minecraft Demonstrationscited by 210
  9. 2020The NetHack Learning Environmentcited by 196
  10. 2019Interactive Fiction Games: A Colossal Adventurecited by 165
  11. 2020Keep CALM and Explore: Language Models for Action Generation in Text-based Gamescited by 108
  12. 2020Graph Constrained Reinforcement Learning for Natural Language Action Spacescited by 80
19 more
  1. 2015Language Understanding for Text-based Games Using Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 70
  2. 2020Language as a Cognitive Tool to Imagine Goals in Curiosity-Driven Explorationcited by 68
  3. 2018Playing Text-Adventure Games with Graph-Based Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 53
  4. 2022Semantic Exploration from Language Abstractions and Pretrained Representationscited by 51
  5. 2022Improving Intrinsic Exploration with Language Abstractionscited by 49
  6. 2020Text-based RL Agents with Commonsense Knowledge: New Challenges, Environments and Baselinescited by 37
  7. 2018Counting to Explore and Generalize in Text-based Gamescited by 36
  8. 2020How to Motivate Your Dragon: Teaching Goal-Driven Agents to Speak and Act in Fantasy Worldscited by 35
  9. 2021Neuro-Symbolic Reinforcement Learning with First-Order Logiccited by 30
  10. 2020Interactive Fiction Game Playing as Multi-Paragraph Reading Comprehension with Reinforcement Learningcited by 27
  11. 2021Reading and Acting while Blindfolded: The Need for Semantics in Text Game Agentscited by 20
  12. 2021Megaverse: Simulating Embodied Agents at One Million Experiences per Secondcited by 19
  13. 2020Exploration Based Language Learning for Text-Based Gamescited by 18
  14. 2021A Systematic Survey of Text Worlds as Embodied Natural Language Environmentscited by 17
  15. 2021A Survey of Text Games for Reinforcement Learning informed by Natural Languagecited by 14
  16. 2021Generalization in Text-based Games via Hierarchical Reinforcement Learningcited by 11
  17. 2022IGLU Gridworld: Simple and Fast Environment for Embodied Dialog Agentscited by 9
  18. 2018Playing by the Book: An Interactive Game Approach for Action Graph Extraction from Textcited by 6
  19. 2021LOA: Logical Optimal Actions for Text-based Interaction Gamescited by 6

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2022: 1; 2023: 2; 2024: 3; 2025: 2; 2026: 4.

12 papers.

  1. 2023LMRL Gym: Benchmarks for Multi-Turn Reinforcement Learning with Language Modelscited by 84
  2. 2024PDDLEGO: Iterative Planning in Textual Environmentscited by 14
  3. 2022Behavior Cloned Transformers are Neurosymbolic Reasonerscited by 10
  4. 2025TALES: Text Adventure Learning Environment Suitecited by 9
  5. 2026Same Signal, Opposite Meaning: Direction-Informed Adaptive Learning for LLM Agentscited by 4
  6. 2024DAVIS: Planning Agent with Knowledge Graph-Powered Inner Monologuecited by 3
  7. 2025Language Model as Planner and Formalizer under Constraintscited by 3
  8. 2023Self-Supervised Behavior Cloned Transformers are Path Crawlers for Text Gamescited by 1
  9. 2024Structured Event Reasoning with Large Language Modelscited by 0
  10. 2026DORA Explorer: Improving the Exploration Ability of LLMs Without Trainingcited by 0
  11. 2026From Agent Failures to Text Policies: What Works and What Breakscited by 0
  12. 2026Leveraging Trajectory Graphs for Pre-Execution Error Diagnosis in Agentic LLM Systemscited by 0