The rules of the game are simple. What’s amazing is the complex effects they create.
Conway's Game of Life
John Horton Conway (1937-2020) was a British mathematician. He devised this game in the 1970’s.
The game plays out on a two dimensional grid, like an infinite chessboard. It is a zero player game because, once the board is set, there doesn’t need to be any more input from a human.
The starting board can even be set up in a random state, meaning no human decisions are ever needed. You would be forgiven for thinking that such a game would be uninteresting. How wrong you would be!
Try It Out
When John Conway invented the Game of Life, he used graph paper and blackboards to try it out. Personal computers and devices were not available in the ’70s.
Let's Automate It
The simple rules of Life made it obvious to write computer programs that play it. There are lots.
Let's Be Systematic
We’ve tried evolving some random soups and we have seen a few still life patterns and some oscillator patterns.
Life Forms
People have been investigating Life for decades and they have found some really surprising patterns. The ones that even surprised John Conway were the spaceships.