🧬 Game of Life Lab

What is the Game of Life?

The Game of Life was invented in 1970 by the mathematician John Horton Conway. It isn't a game you win or lose: it's a tiny world on a grid of squares, where each square is either alive or empty. You set up the first pattern, press Play, and the world changes one step (one generation) at a time, following just three rules.

A live cell with two or three live neighbours stays alive. A live cell with fewer than two neighbours dies of loneliness, and one with more than three dies of overcrowding. An empty square with exactly three live neighbours comes to life. That's all. Yet from those three rules come patterns that blink, patterns that never change, patterns that fly across the grid and patterns that grow for hundreds of generations before settling down.

Draw, stamp and watch

Game of Life Lab makes it easy to explore. Click squares to bring cells to life, drag to draw lines, and press Play. New cells glow light blue, then turn green, yellow and finally pink as they get older, and cells that die flash red as they fade, so you can see exactly what is happening at every step. Slow it down to watch one generation at a time, or speed it up to see the big picture.

The pattern library has twelve famous shapes to stamp onto the grid. The glider is five cells that walk diagonally forever. The blinker, toad and beacon blink on and off. The pulsar is a big, beautiful star that pulses every three generations. The spaceship flies straight across the grid, the R-pentomino and acorn start tiny and explode into huge messy colonies, the diehard vanishes completely after 130 generations, and the glider gun fires out a new glider every thirty generations.

Eight challenges

The challenges turn the Game of Life into puzzles. Build a blinker with three cells. Make a still life that never changes. Launch a glider from one corner into the goal box in the other. Find a pattern of just five cells that is still alive after 300 generations, or one of seven cells that grows to 100. Each challenge has a dashed build zone and a limited number of cells, and you can reset and try again as often as you like. Every challenge you solve earns a star.

Five rule sets

In Free Lab you can change the rules themselves. HighLife adds one extra birth rule and has a famous pattern that copies itself. Seeds kills every cell at once but lets new ones be born with two neighbours, so almost anything explodes. Maze grows twisting corridors, and Day & Night treats alive and dead the same way, making blobs of light and dark. Turn on edge wrapping and anything that flies off one side comes back on the other.

Why it's great for learning

The Game of Life is loved by mathematicians, computer scientists and teachers because it shows how complicated behaviour can come from simple rules, the same idea behind flocks of birds, growing crystals and computer programs. Playing with it builds pattern spotting, prediction and logical thinking, and the challenges reward careful planning over guessing.

Game of Life Lab is free, runs in any modern browser on computers, tablets and phones, and needs no download or sign-up. There are no ads inside the game and no chat, and your stars are saved only in your own browser. Parents can read more on the Parents & Safety page. For more science sandboxes, try Elements Sandbox, Marble Run Builder or the rest of our Sandbox Games.

Frequently asked questions