DiG-bench: Discovery in Games
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Abstract (arXiv)
Discovery---formulating novel generalizations---is a central part of the scientific process. Despite its importance, there is a gap in the current AI benchmark landscape, with few benchmarks directly probing the capacity for discovering new knowledge with experimentation in controlled environments where the objective is unknown. To address this gap, we release a new benchmark: DiG-bench (Discovery in Games). DiG-bench consists of a set of 70 independent games. Each game is encoded as a short string and has unique transformation rules that must be discovered through interaction and experimentation. The levels of the game present a series of challenges to test whether the rules have been discovered, where the win conditions for each level are also unknown. We provide games at seven tiers of difficulty for AI agents. The lowest tier is routinely solvable by multiple models, while the highest tier challenges the best models in agentic harnesses. All 70 games were solved by at least one human on first attempt. A subset of 21 games is released publicly, and the remainder is held private for secure evaluation.
Key facts. Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 19 of its 32 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 12 Aug 2026.
Builds on
19 of 32 references.
References · 19
- 2022ScienceWorld: Is your Agent Smarter than a 5th Grader?cited by 327
- 2022Emergent Analogical Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 240
- 2019RAVEN: A Dataset for Relational and Analogical Visual rEasoNingcited by 226
- 2025ARC-AGI-2: A New Challenge for Frontier AI Reasoning Systemscited by 190
- 2024BALROG: Benchmarking Agentic LLM and VLM Reasoning On Gamescited by 146
- 2023The ConceptARC Benchmark: Evaluating Understanding and Generalization in the ARC Domaincited by 101
- 2024DISCOVERYWORLD: A Virtual Environment for Developing and Evaluating Automated Scientific Discovery Agentscited by 100
- 2020Bongard-LOGO: A New Benchmark for Human-Level Concept Learning and Reasoningcited by 63
- 2022A Benchmark for Compositional Visual Reasoningcited by 43
- 2025NewtonBench: Benchmarking Generalizable Scientific Law Discovery in LLM Agentscited by 36
- 2025BoxingGym: Benchmarking Progress in Automated Experimental Design and Model Discoverycited by 18
- 2025PhysGym: Benchmarking LLMs in Interactive Physics Discovery with Controlled Priorscited by 15
7 more
- 2025Are Large Language Models Reliable AI Scientists? Assessing Reverse-Engineering of Black-Box Systemscited by 14
- 2025Measuring Scientific Capabilities of Language Models with a Systems Biology Dry Labcited by 12
- 2026AI Gamestore: Scalable, Open-Ended Evaluation of Machine General Intelligence with Human Gamescited by 12
- 2026PRO-LONG: Programmatic Memory Enables Long-Horizon Reasoningcited by 10
- 2025Your Reasoning Benchmark May Not Test Reasoning: Revealing Perception Bottleneck in Abstract Reasoning Benchmarkscited by 5
- 2026CausalGame: Benchmarking Causal Thinking of LLM Agents in Gamescited by 5
- 2026FALSIFYBENCH: Evaluating Inductive Reasoning in LLMs with Rule Discovery Gamescited by 1
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 3.
3 papers.
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026OpenGameEval: Benchmarking Agentic Programming and Exploration in a Stateful Game Engine
- 2026FIRE-Bench: Evaluating AI Agents on the Rediscovery of Scientific Insights
- 2026SpireBench: Evaluating Long-Horizon Strategic Play of Agentic Models with Slay the Spire
- 2026MLS-Bench: A Holistic and Rigorous Assessment of AI Systems on Building Better AI
- 2026An Experimental Design Approach to Evaluating Agentic AI's Autonomous Model Discovery
- 2026Modular Discovery of General Game-Playing Algorithms with Large Language Models
- 2026Do Androids Dream of Breaking the Game? Systematically Auditing AI Agent Benchmarks with BenchJack
- 2026Abstraction Agent