What's New
Game of Life has been one of the most popular simulations here since day one. The flat 2D grid version is great, but it has always felt a bit constrained. With this update, cells can now live on the surface of a sphere.
Spherical Game of Life works by tessellating the sphere into a geodesic grid (similar to a Goldberg polyhedron) where every cell has approximately 6 neighbours. The resulting patterns behave differently than the flat grid version — gliders curve around the sphere, and patterns that would normally escape off the edge wrap around.
New Rulesets
Conway B3/S23
The original. Born with 3 neighbours, survives with 2 or 3.
Highlife B36/S23
Like Conway but cells also born with 6 neighbours. Produces replicators.
Day & Night B3678/S34678
Dense and sparse regions are symmetric. Looks like lace.
Custom
Toggle any birth/survival count to create your own rule.
Colour-Coded Cell Age
Cells now fade through a gradient based on how long they've been alive. Newly born cells are bright white. Older stable cells are deep blue. This makes it easy to spot active growth fronts and long-lived still lifes at a glance.
Play with it at /game-of-life/. Switch to Highlife mode and wait a few hundred generations for the replicators to appear.