A whole universe from four rules. Draw your own living cells on the grid — click, or click-and-drag to paint — or stamp in a classic pattern, then press Play and watch order, chaos, and motion emerge with no further input from you.
The Game of Life, devised by mathematician John Conway in 1970, is a cellular automaton: a grid of cells that are each either alive or dead. It is a "zero-player game" — you set the starting pattern, and everything after that is decided by four rules applied to every cell at once, based on its eight neighbours.
From those simple rules, strikingly complex behaviour emerges: still lifes that never change, oscillators that blink forever (Blinker, Pulsar), spaceships that glide across the grid (the Glider), and even guns that spawn an endless stream of them. The Game of Life is Turing-complete — in principle it can compute anything a computer can.
Cells are shaded by age: bright means just born, deeper blue means long-surviving.
Pick Freehand to draw cells by hand, or choose a pattern and click the grid to stamp it. Then hit Play — or Step one generation at a time. You can keep drawing while it runs.