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lechmazur
step_game
AI & Machine Learning2025–2026
lechmazur / step_game

step_game

Multi-Agent Step Race Benchmark: Assessing LLM Collaboration and Deception Under Pressure. A multi-player “step-race” that challenges LLMs to engage in public conversation before secretly picking a move (1, 3, or 5 steps). Whenever two or more players choose the same number, all colliding players fail to advance.

2Distinct people
7Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
93GitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Multi-Agent Step Race Benchmark: Assessing LLM Collaboration and Deception Under Pressure. A multi-player “step-race” that challenges LLMs to engage in public conversation before secretly picking a move (1, 3, or 5 steps). Whenever two or more players choose the same number, all colliding players fail to advance.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by month7 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2025-01-22 16:17:47 UTC to 2026-01-21 01:38:13 UTC.

01232025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 commentsJan 20252025-02-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-03-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 1 submissions, 2 comments2025-03-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-04-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-04-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-05-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2025-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 commentsJul 20252025-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 commentsJan 2026

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
Jan 20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-02-01 00:00:00 UTC110
Feb 20252025-02-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-03-01 00:00:00 UTC312
Mar 20252025-03-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-04-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Apr 20252025-04-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-05-01 00:00:00 UTC202
May 20252025-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-06-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jun 20252025-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-07-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jul 20252025-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-08-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Aug 20252025-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-09-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Sep 20252025-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-10-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Oct 20252025-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Nov 20252025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Dec 20252025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jan 20262026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

7 sources
Yes, predefined strategies are very interesting to examine. I have two simple ones in another multi-agent benchmark, https://github.com/lechmazur/step_game (SilentGreedyPlayer and SilentRandomPlayer), and it's fascinating to see LLMs detect and respond to them. The only issue with including them here is that the cost of running a large set of games isn't trivial. Another multi-agent benchmark I'm currently developing, which involves buying and selling, will also feature many predefined strategies.
In Benchmarking LLM social skills with an elimination game
Author here - I'm planning to create game versions of this benchmark, as well as my other multi-agent benchmarks (https://github.com/lechmazur/step_game, https://github.com/lechmazur/pgg_bench/, and a few others I'm developing). But I'm not sure if a leaderboard alone would be enough for comparing LLMs to top humans, since it would require playing so many games that it would be tedious. So I think it would be just for fun.
In Benchmarking LLM social skills with an elimination game
I ran three more of my independent benchmarks: - Improves upon GPT-4o's score on the Short Story Creative Writing Benchmark, but Claude Sonnets and DeepSeek R1 score higher. (https://github.com/lechmazur/writing/) - Improves upon GPT-4o's score on the Confabulations/Hallucinations on Provided Documents Benchmark, nearly matching Gemini 1.5 Pro (Sept) as the best-performing non-reasoning model. (https://github.com/lechmazur/confabulations) - Improves upon GPT-4o's score on the Thematic Generalization Benchmark, however, it doesn't match the scores of Claude 3.7 Sonnet or Gemini 2.0 Pro Exp. (https://github.com/lechmazur/generalization) I should have the results from the multi-agent collaboration, strategy, and deception benchmarks within a couple of days. (https://github.com/lechmazur/elimination_game/, https://github.com/lechmazur/step_ga
Read the rest
In GPT-4.5
I have a set of independent benchmarks and most also show a difference between reasoning and non-reasoning models: LLM Confabulation (Hallucination): https://github.com/lechmazur/confabulations/ LLM Step Game: https://github.com/lechmazur/step_game LLM Thematic Generalization Benchmark: https://github.com/lechmazur/generalization LLM Creative Story-Writing Benchmark: https://github.com/lechmazur/writing Extended NYT Connections LLM Benchmark: https://github.com/lechmazur/nyt-connections/ and a couple more that I haven't updated very recently.
In PhD Knowledge Not Required: A Reasoning Challenge for Large Language Models

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