Status

Published in IEEE Transactions on Games (Early Access).

Abstract

Stealth gameplay is built on deliberately asymmetric information: players manage how visible and audible they are to AI opponents, and detection triggers escalating responses. Stealth has since spread beyond a single genre into open worlds, systemic sandboxes, action-adventure, and VR games, but the related work is fragmented across communities with diverging vocabulary, implementation patterns, and evaluation practices. This survey organizes 103 works from 2000 to 2025 across design principles, artificial intelligence, procedural level generation, player experience, and production applications. It identifies shared abstractions across genres and pipelines, compares evidence from production reports, prototypes, and player studies, and outlines open questions — notably how to align agent capability with behavior that players can read and designers can control.

Citation

Xu, K., & Verbrugge, C. (2026). Stealth in Games: A Survey. IEEE Transactions on Games. https://doi.org/10.1109/TG.2026.3734827

@article{xu2026stealthsurvey,
  author  = {Kaijie Xu and Clark Verbrugge},
  title   = {Stealth in Games: A Survey},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Games},
  year    = {2026},
  doi     = {10.1109/TG.2026.3734827}
}