Related papers: The Legend of Zelda: The Complexity of Mechanics

We prove NP-hardness results for five of Nintendo's largest video game franchises: Mario, Donkey Kong, Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and Pokemon. Our results apply to generalized versions of Super Mario Bros. 1-3, The Lost Levels, and Super…

We classify the computational complexity of the popular video games Portal and Portal 2. We isolate individual mechanics of the game and prove NP-hardness, PSPACE-completeness, or (pseudo)polynomiality depending on the specific game…

We initiate a general theory for analyzing the complexity of motion planning of a single robot through a graph of "gadgets", each with their own state, set of locations, and allowed traversals between locations that can depend on and change…

Using the notion of visibility representations, our paper establishes a new property of instances of the Nondeterministic Constraint Logic (NCL) problem (a PSPACE-complete problem that is very convenient to prove the PSPACE-hardness of…

We build a general theory for characterizing the computational complexity of motion planning of robot(s) through a graph of "gadgets", where each gadget has its own state defining a set of allowed traversals which in turn modify the…

Building on the results published in arxiv:2004.12849 we present a general framework for demonstrating the NP-hardness of satisfying many genres of loop and path puzzles using a 'T-metacell' gadget. We then use this to prove the…

An open-close door gadget has two states and three tunnels that can be traversed by an agent (player, robot, etc.): the "opening" and "closing" tunnels set the gadget's state to open and closed, respectively, while the "traverse" tunnel can…

We prove that a variant of 2048, a popular online puzzle game, is PSPACE-Complete. Our hardness result holds for a version of the problem where the player has oracle access to the computer player's moves. Specifically, we show that for an…

We analyze the computational complexity of the video game "CELESTE" and prove that solving a generalized level in it is NP-Complete. Further, we also show how, upon introducing a small change in the game mechanics (adding a new game…

We establish some general schemes relating the computational complexity of a video game to the presence of certain common elements or mechanics, such as destroyable paths, collectible items, doors opened by keys or activated by buttons or…

Temporal graphs are a popular modelling mechanism for dynamic complex systems that extend ordinary graphs with discrete time. Simply put, time progresses one unit per step and the availability of edges can change with time. We consider the…

Concavity and its refinements underpin tractability in multiplayer games, where players independently choose actions to maximize their own payoffs which depend on other players' actions. In concave games, where players' strategy sets are…

In combinatorial game theory, the winning player for a position in normal play is analyzed and characterized via algebraic operations. Such analyses define a value for each position, called a game value. A game (ruleset) is called universal…

Combinatorial games lead to several interesting, clean problems in algorithms and complexity theory, many of which remain open. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the area to encourage further research. In particular, we…

We study hedonic coalition formation games in which cooperation among the players is restricted by a graph structure: a subset of players can form a coalition if and only if they are connected in the given graph. We investigate the…

This project investigates the potential of computers to solve complex tasks such as games. The paper proves that the complexity of a generalized version of spider solitaire is NP-Complete and uses much of structure of the proof that…

We introduce a search game for two players played on a "scenario" consisting of a ground set together with a collection of feasible partitions. This general setting allows us to obtain new characterisations of many width parameters such as…

We analyze the computational complexity of motion planning through local "input/output" gadgets with separate entrances and exits, and a subset of allowed traversals from entrances to exits, each of which changes the state of the gadget and…

We study algorithmic complexity of solving subtraction games in a~fixed dimension with a finite difference set. We prove that there exists a game in this class such that any algorithm solving the game runs in exponential time. Also we prove…

Simple games cover voting systems in which a single alternative, such as a bill or an amendment, is pitted against the status quo. A simple game or a yes-no voting system is a set of rules that specifies exactly which collections of ``yea''…