FootsiesGym: A Fighting Game Benchmark for Two-Player Zero-Sum Imperfect-Information Games

2026-07-07Artificial Intelligence

Artificial IntelligenceComputer Science and Game Theory
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Authors
Chase McDonald, Nathan Tsang, Wesley N. Kerr
Abstract
We present FootsiesGym, an open-source environment for learning in a non-trivial two-player, zero-sum, imperfect-information game. Built on HiFight's minimalist 2D fighting game Footsies, it isolates the cyclic, non-transitive strategic interactions of fighting game neutral play while remaining simple enough for efficient analysis. We provide a vectorized simulator that enables high-throughput training on standard hardware, making the environment accessible and reproducible. We describe the design of the environment, benchmark several reinforcement learning algorithms, and discuss open research directions it enables. The code is available at https://github.com/como-research/FootsiesGym.