mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

TALES: Text Adventure Learning Environment Suite

arXiv 2504.14128 ↗First posted 19 Apr 2025cs.AI cs.CLcited by 11

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Abstract (arXiv)

Reasoning is an essential skill to enable Large Language Models (LLMs) to interact with the world. As tasks become more complex, they demand increasingly sophisticated and diverse reasoning capabilities for sequential decision-making, requiring structured reasoning over the context history to determine the next best action. We introduce TALES, a diverse collection of synthetic and human-written text-adventure games designed to challenge and evaluate diverse reasoning capabilities. We present results over a range of LLMs, open- and closed-weights, performing a qualitative analysis on the top performing models. Despite an impressive showing on synthetic games, even the top LLM-driven agents fail to achieve 15% on games designed for human enjoyment. Code and visualization of the experiments can be found at https://microsoft.github.io/tale-suite.

Key facts. Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 35 of its 43 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 19 Apr 2025.

Builds on

35 of 43 references.

References · 35

  1. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,695
  2. 2023Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Modelcited by 8,065
  3. 2020ALFWorld: Aligning Text and Embodied Environments for Interactive Learningcited by 1,205
  4. 2014Neural Turing Machinescited by 644
  5. 2024AppWorld: A Controllable World of Apps and People for Benchmarking Interactive Coding Agentscited by 401
  6. 2024AgentBoard: An Analytical Evaluation Board of Multi-turn LLM Agentscited by 339
  7. 2018TextWorld: A Learning Environment for Text-based Gamescited by 310
  8. 2024Trial and Error: Exploration-Based Trajectory Optimization for LLM Agentscited by 197
  9. 2023ADaPT: As-Needed Decomposition and Planning with Language Modelscited by 177
  10. 2019Interactive Fiction Games: A Colossal Adventurecited by 168
  11. 2023SwiftSage: A Generative Agent with Fast and Slow Thinking for Complex Interactive Taskscited by 168
  12. 2020Keep CALM and Explore: Language Models for Action Generation in Text-based Gamescited by 108
23 more
  1. 2020Graph Constrained Reinforcement Learning for Natural Language Action Spacescited by 80
  2. 2023Evaluating Cognitive Maps and Planning in Large Language Models with CogEvalcited by 77
  3. 2015Language Understanding for Text-based Games Using Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 71
  4. 2024Agent Planning with World Knowledge Modelcited by 70
  5. 2018Playing Text-Adventure Games with Graph-Based Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 53
  6. 2020How to Avoid Being Eaten by a Grue: Structured Exploration Strategies for Textual Worldscited by 38
  7. 2018Counting to Explore and Generalize in Text-based Gamescited by 36
  8. 2024Intelligent Go-Explore: Standing on the Shoulders of Giant Foundation Modelscited by 33
  9. 2023Can Large Language Models Play Text Games Well? Current State-of-the-Art and Open Questionscited by 30
  10. 2024ECBD: Evidence-Centered Benchmark Design for NLPcited by 28
  11. 2024Soft Self-Consistency Improves Language Model Agentscited by 25
  12. 2024ReAct Meets ActRe: When Language Agents Enjoy Training Data Autonomycited by 23
  13. 2024Empowering Large Language Model Agents through Action Learningcited by 22
  14. 2019NAIL: A General Interactive Fiction Agentcited by 17
  15. 2024Policy Improvement using Language Feedback Modelscited by 16
  16. 2021A Survey of Text Games for Reinforcement Learning informed by Natural Languagecited by 14
  17. 2022TextWorldExpress: Simulating Text Games at One Million Steps Per Secondcited by 13
  18. 2024Language Guided Exploration for RL Agents in Text Environmentscited by 9
  19. 2024STARLING: Self-supervised Training of Text-based Reinforcement Learning Agent with Large Language Modelscited by 8
  20. 2023Story Shaping: Teaching Agents Human-like Behavior with Storiescited by 7
  21. 2023Thespian: Multi-Character Text Role-Playing Game Agentscited by 6
  22. 2023A Minimal Approach for Natural Language Action Space in Text-based Gamescited by 3
  23. 2024A Mixture-of-Experts Approach to Few-Shot Task Transfer in Open-Ended Text Worldscited by 2

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 4; 2026: 7.

11 papers.

  1. 2026WebGameBench: Requirement-to-Application Evaluation for Coding Agents via Browser-Native Gamescited by 12
  2. 2025PuzzleJAX: A Benchmark for Reasoning and Learningcited by 4
  3. 2025A Third Paradigm for LLM Evaluation: Dialogue Game-Based Evaluation using clembenchcited by 3
  4. 2026Sample-Efficient Learning from Agent Experiencecited by 3
  5. 2025Dual-Scale World Models for LLM Agents Towards Hard-Exploration Problemscited by 2
  6. 2026Code Owns the Simulation, Jev Owns the Evaluationcited by 1
  7. 2025ByteSized32Refactored: Towards an Extensible Interactive Text Games Corpus for LLM World Modeling and Evaluationcited by 0
  8. 2026LACE: Lattice Attention for Cross-thread Explorationcited by 0
  9. 2026DORA Explorer: Improving the Exploration Ability of LLMs Without Trainingcited by 0
  10. 2026Language Equality has a Price: A Systematic Investigation of Multi-turn LLM Performance for EU-24+cited by 0
  11. 2026Reading Right, Acting Wrong: Diagnosing Decision Failures of System One Models in Agent Loopscited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2021Modeling Worlds in Text
  2. 2025TextGames: Learning to Self-Play Text-Based Puzzle Games via Language Model Reasoning
  3. 2026Playing With AI: How Do State-Of-The-Art Large Language Models Perform in the 1977 Text-Based Adventure Game Zork?
  4. 2026Reasoning Capabilities of Large Language Models. Lessons Learned from General Game Playing
  5. 2024TMGBench: A Systematic Game Benchmark for Evaluating Strategic Reasoning Abilities of LLMs
  6. 2025Haunted House: A text-based game for comparing the flexibility of mental models in humans and LLMs
  7. 2025Large Language Models as Pok'emon Battle Agents: Strategic Play and Content Generation
  8. 2025Game Reasoning Arena: A Framework and Benchmark for Assessing Reasoning Capabilities of Large Language Models via Game Play