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Comment by kqr | Hacker News Reader

I disagree. Lockout, Dreamhold, Lost Pig, and So Far are new games but in the old style. Plundered Hearts is literally one of the old games (though ahead of its time).

I'll grant you that 9:05 and For a Change are somewhat more modern: the former has easy puzzles, the latter very abstract puzzles.

I disagree new text adventures are not about puzzles and winning. They come in all kinds of flavours these days. Even games like 9:05 pace their narrative with traditional puzzles, meaning we can measure forward progress just the same. And to be fair, LLMs are so bad at these games that in these articles, I'm merely trying to get them to navigate the world at all.

If anything, I'd argue Adventure is a bad example of the genre you refer to. It was (by design) more of a caving simulator/sandbox with optinal loot than a game with progress toward a goal.

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As the author of For A Change, I am astonished that anyone would think it was a good testbed for an LLM text adventure solver. It's fun that they tried, though.

Thank you for making it. The imagery of it is striking and comes back to me every now and then. I cannot unhear "a high wall is not high to be measured in units of length, but of angle" -- beautifully put.

The idea was that it'd be good example of having to navigate somewhat foreign but internally consistent worlds, an essential text adventure skill.

Ha, I didn't realize that I was replying to the person who wrote the post!

The audience I had in mind when writing it was people who were already quite experienced in playing interactive fiction and could then be challenged in a new way while bringing their old skills to bear. So it's sort of a second-level game in that respect (so is 9:05, in different ways, as someone else mentioned).

We will have to agree to disagree, if you'll allow me the cliche.

I didn't use Adventure as an example of IF, it belongs in the older "text adventure" genre. Which is why I thought it would be more fitting to test LLMs, since it's not about experiences but about maxing points.

I think there's nothing to "solve" that an LLM can solve about IF. This genre of games, in its modern expression, is about breaking boundaries and expectations, and making the player enjoy this. Sometimes the fun is simply seeing different endings and how they relate to each other. Since LLMs cannot experience joy or surprise, and can only mechanically navigate the game (maybe "explore all possible end states" is a goal?), they cannot "play" it. Before you object: I'm aware you didn't claim the LLMs are really playing the game!

But here's a test for your set of LLMs: how would they "win" at "Rematch"? This game is about repeatedly dying, understanding what's happening, and stringing together a single sentence that will break the cycle and win the game. Can any LLM do this, a straightforward puzzle? I'd be impressed!

I think I see what you mean and with these clarifications we are in agreement. There is a lot of modern works of interactive fiction that goes way beyond what the old text adventures did, and work even when judged as art or literature. I just haven't played much of it because I'm a fan of the old-style games.

As for the specific question, they would progress at Rematch by figuring out ever more complicated interactions that work and will be used to survive, naturally.

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