Each cell on the grid is either alive or dead. Whether it lives or dies in the next moment is decided purely by how many of its 8 neighboring cells are alive. That's the entire rule — yet from this simple rule, patterns like the "glider," which crawls along on its own, appear all by themselves.
This world has exactly 4 rules. ① A living cell with fewer than 2 neighbors dies of loneliness (underpopulation). ② A living cell with 2 or 3 neighbors survives unchanged. ③ A living cell with 4 or more neighbors dies from overcrowding. ④ A dead cell with exactly 3 neighbors comes to life (birth). Applying these rules to the entire grid at once is one generation.
The cell in the middle with the bold outline is the one we're focusing on. Click the surrounding cells to make some neighbors alive, and click the center cell to toggle whether it's alive or dead, then check what happens to it in the next generation.
Pick a pattern and play it. While paused, you can also click cells to draw your own.
The Game of Life has been proven to be Turing complete — meaning these simple rules alone can, in theory, build a computer capable of any calculation. Enthusiasts have actually built logic gates, and even calculators, within the Game of Life.
This principle of "simple rules → complex patterns" became the root of research into artificial life, complex systems science, and simulations (cellular automata) that mimic natural phenomena like city growth or the spread of wildfires.