Explore Conway's Game of Life on a drawable board
Three rules, endless complexity. Draw cells, drop gliders and still lifes, and watch emergent behaviour unfold.
Tools used in this guide
The job
Conway's B3/S23: a live cell with 2–3 neighbours survives; a dead cell with exactly 3 is born. From that, gliders fly, guns fire, and computers have been built. A board you can draw on is the way in.
Draw, stamp, run
Click or drag to flip cells. Stamp classic patterns (glider, blinker, Gosper gun) centred on the board. Then start the simulation or step generations one at a time; speed is adjustable.
- The glider crawls diagonally, one cell every 4 generations.
- The board is bounded — patterns that reach the edge die against it rather than wrapping.
Things to try
A 3-cell row (blinker) oscillates forever. Two gliders aimed at each other annihilate into a small still life. A random soup usually decays to a few oscillators — unless a gun gets going.