Game of Life is a cellular automaton devised by British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970.
It's a zero-player game—evolution is determined entirely by the initial state, requiring no further input. You simply create a starting pattern and observe how it evolves.
The Four Rules:
• Underpopulation: Live cell with fewer than 2 neighbors dies
• Survival: Live cell with 2 or 3 neighbors lives on
• Overpopulation: Live cell with more than 3 neighbors dies
• Reproduction: Dead cell with exactly 3 neighbors becomes alive
The Game of Life is Turing complete—theoretically capable of simulating any computer program or universal Turing machine.
Each generation applies the rules simultaneously across the infinite grid, creating emergent patterns from simple deterministic rules.