Game of Life
Run Conway's Game of Life in your browser, draw your own cells, drop classic patterns, and watch them evolve.
Conway's Game of Life is a cellular automaton on a grid of cells that are either alive or dead. Each generation, every cell looks at its eight neighbors and follows two rules: a live cell with two or three live neighbors stays alive, and a dead cell with exactly three live neighbors is born. Click or drag on the grid to toggle cells, then press Play.
Click a cell to toggle it. Click and drag to paint.
Patterns are dropped onto the grid (cleared first). The glider gun resizes the grid so it has room to fire.
How it works
The grid holds cells that are either alive or dead. To compute the next generation, every cell counts how many of its eight surrounding neighbors are alive, then applies the B3/S23 rule set:
- A live cell with two or three live neighbors survives.
- A live cell with fewer than two, or more than three, live neighbors dies.
- A dead cell with exactly three live neighbors becomes alive.
With Wrap edges off, cells beyond the border are treated as dead. With it on, the grid behaves as a torus, so the left edge neighbors the right edge and the top neighbors the bottom.
The included patterns show typical behavior. A Blinker is three cells in a row that flips between horizontal and vertical every generation. A Glider walks diagonally across the grid, returning to its starting shape every four generations. A Pulsar is a large oscillator with a period of three. The Gosper glider gun is a still arrangement that emits a fresh glider every thirty generations.
Use Share Link to copy a URL that restores the current grid size and live cells. The shared grid opens paused so you can study it before pressing Play.