Too few. Fade away.
A living cell with fewer than two living neighbors dies from underpopulation.
The curiosity lab / An interactive field guideMOON SHERPA / LABS
Conway’s
Game of Life.
Four simple rules. No master plan. A whole world of unexpected behavior. Start with a few cells and see what happens next.
01 / See it for yourself
A world at your fingertips.
Load a pattern. Press Play. Or move one generation at a time and watch a small decision become a very different future.
Generation0000
Living cells048
PAUSED Living cell48 × 28 / fixed boundary
01 / Choose a starting point
Small beginnings.
Pulsar / Period 3
An intricate rhythm built from the same four rules. Three generations return the pattern to its starting shape.
Click a cell to toggle it. Keyboard: focus the board, use arrow keys to select a cell, then Space or Enter to toggle. Editing pauses the simulation.
EVERY CELL. EVERY GENERATION. THE SAME RULES.
This small board has fixed edges: cells outside it stay dead. Standard Life imagines an infinite grid. Press Play when you’re ready.
02 / The entire rulebook
No instructions beyond these.
Every cell is alive or dead. It looks at its eight immediate neighbors, including the diagonals. Then every cell updates at the same time.
Just enough. Carry on.
A living cell with two or three living neighbors survives into the next generation.
Too many. Make room.
A living cell with more than three living neighbors dies from overpopulation.
The start of something.
An empty cell with exactly three living neighbors becomes alive.
The shorthand: B3 / S23
Birth on 3. Survival on 2 or 3.
That’s the whole system. No cell knows what the others will do next. The intricate shapes come from local interactions, repeated over time.
03 / Recognize what emerges
Still. Repeating. Moving.
Some patterns settle into balance. Some find a rhythm. Others appear to travel. Three families give us a language for what we see.
The art of staying put.
A still life satisfies the rules exactly as it is. No cell changes between generations. Load the Block and step forward: nothing needs to move.
Look for: Block, Beehive, Loaf, Boat, and Tub.
Life finds a rhythm.
An oscillator returns to its starting state in the same position. The number of generations in its loop is called its period.
Try: Blinker, period 2. Pulsar, period 3.
A pattern with somewhere to go.
A spaceship repeats its shape in a new position. The Glider advances one cell diagonally every four generations on an otherwise empty grid.
Try: Glider. Count four steps, then compare its position.
04 / From observation to discoveryChange the beginning.
Change the beginning.
Find a different ending.
Life is deterministic: the same starting grid produces the same future. Change that starting grid, even slightly, and you have a new experiment.
- 01 / Seed
Begin with a soup.
A soup is a random starting configuration. Load Random soup in the playground and watch how it evolves. Reset brings back the same soup so you can compare your edits.
- 02 / Observe
Let the rules do the work.
Follow the population, the quiet regions, and the recurring shapes. Some cells disappear quickly; others form patterns that persist. A finite simulation may also be shaped by its boundaries.
- 03 / Classify
Describe what remains.
Does a pattern stay fixed, repeat in place, or travel? Count its cells and measure its period. These observations turn a fascinating shape into something you can compare with other patterns.
The experiment behind the experiment
What if the rules could evolve, too?
Our LIFE project takes the next step with custom rules, an Evolution Mode, and pattern discovery. Explore the full simulator or read the engineering story behind it.
05 / A few good questions
Keep your curiosity alive.
What are the rules of Conway’s Game of Life?
Each cell has eight neighbors, including diagonals. A live cell with fewer than two live neighbors dies; one with two or three survives; one with more than three dies. A dead cell with exactly three live neighbors becomes alive. All cells update simultaneously. The notation B3/S23 means birth on three neighbors, survival on two or three.
What is a still life?
A still life is a pattern that does not change between generations. The Block is a 2 × 2 square of four living cells. Each of its live cells has three live neighbors, and none of the dead cells around it has exactly three. The Beehive, Loaf, Boat, and Tub are other examples.
What is an oscillator?
An oscillator returns to the same state in the same position after a fixed number of generations, called its period. The Blinker repeats every two generations; the Pulsar repeats every three. Load either in the playground and use Step to follow one complete cycle.
What is a spaceship?
A spaceship returns to its original shape after a fixed number of generations, but at a different position on the grid. A Glider moves one cell diagonally every four generations. On our finite demo board it will eventually encounter an edge; on an infinite empty grid it can continue moving.
Why does the simulation change when I edit one cell?
A cell’s state affects the neighbor counts of the eight cells around it. Changing one cell can therefore change several births and deaths in the next generation. Those changes propagate through later generations. The rules are deterministic: the same starting grid always produces the same sequence.
Where can I play Conway’s Game of Life?
Use the free playground on this page to load patterns, advance generations, and edit cells. For the broader Moon Sherpa Labs experiment, open LIFE at gameofliveevo.com. Its custom rules and Evolution Mode explore what happens when the rules themselves can change.
Can I use custom rules instead of B3/S23?
This playground runs the standard ruleset — birth on three neighbors, survival on two or three (B3/S23) — with no rules editor built in. For a rules editor and other rulesets, LIFE at gameofliveevo.com lets you change the birth and survival counts and watch the same starting pattern behave differently under Evolution Mode.