The Game of Life

About

Conway's Game of Life is a zero-player game and a famous example of a cellular automaton - a collection of "colored" cells commonly on a two-dimensional grid that evolves through a number of discrete time steps according to a set of rules based on the states of neighboring cells.

John Conway initially developed the algorithm in search of an interesting and unpredictable cell automaton. Upon many experiments later, he decided on the final criteria for which his chosen rules for the game should adhere to:

• There should be no explosive growth
• There should exist small initial patterns with chaotic, unpredictable outcomes
• There should be potential for von Neumann universal constructors
• The rules should be as simple as possible, whilst adhering to the above constraints

The algorithm is Turing complete, meaning that it is capable of performing arbitrary, general purpose computations.