GOL-001
Standard Life
Conway's original B3/S23 rule is the collection's reference point: familiar enough to enter immediately, but inexhaustible once it starts moving.
38 published experiments · a collection growing toward 100
Small rules.
Unexpected worlds.
Explore Game of Life and cellular automata through memory, movement, unusual neighborhoods and collective behavior. Each world has its own rules, a playable simulation and a readable technical guide.
Start with Conway’s classic Life, compare Orbital Drift’s conserved population with Orbital Bloom’s births and deaths, or browse every experiment below.
Classic Life & neighborhoods
GOL-002
Hexagonal Slumber
Life moves onto a six-neighbor honeycomb with a rule composer for survival, permanent death, and temporary sleep.
GOL-003
Entangled Phase Transform
Alternating local rules meet one-to-one distant coupling, where a partner's recent history can overturn a cell's future.
GOL-004
False Neighborhood
Every cell obeys Life-like rules while choosing between its visible Moore neighborhood and eight persistent strangers elsewhere in the field.
GOL-009
Duplex Life
Two independently ruled Life fields take alternating turns, each bending its neighbor count toward the newest state of the other through a tunable fractional influence.
GOL-013
Second Thought
Every cell first proposes an ordinary Life transition, then forecasts the ordinary futures of its eight neighbors: projected collapse can protect a life, while projected expansion can suppress a birth.
GOL-014
Second Thought: Radius Two
The forecast widens to every cell in the surrounding 5 × 5 area: sharp contraction can protect a scheduled death, but projected crowding above an absolute 24-cell threshold forces death.
GOL-021
Two Rings
Eight near neighbors and sixteen further neighbors follow independent rules. Let them decide together with separate birth and survival priorities, or alternate one ring per Step.
GOL-024
Symmetry Lines
Opposite living pairs sustain cells, while two living samples along a ray extend life. Compose symmetry and direction, with an optional additive Game of Life layer.
GOL-025
Mutual Aid
Neighbors forecast their next turn: shared prospects grant life, while a doomed neighborhood drains it away. Compose ordinary Life, support and drain.
GOL-026
Density Layers
Local crowding chooses the law: two nested neighborhood counts select among three Life rules. Compose the radii, thresholds, births and survival.
GOL-033
Life Force
The whole field's living fraction changes the rules of survival and birth. Recorded minimum stays moderate rapid births and deaths.
GOL-034
Rations
Life stores food to survive isolation and crowding. A second rule gates birth and survival by the food held in neighboring cells.
GOL-035
Pocket Life
Life cells ingest lone neighbors into eight pockets. Hosts release stored children along fixed headings, with timed neutrality and one-turn deployment immunity.
GOL-037
Counterpart
Death sends a successor toward a counterpart. Carried eight-bit histories can redirect each identity toward the nearest living neighbor of its former target, creating independent links and shared pursuits.
Memory & time
GOL-002
Hexagonal Slumber
Life moves onto a six-neighbor honeycomb with a rule composer for survival, permanent death, and temporary sleep.
GOL-003
Entangled Phase Transform
Alternating local rules meet one-to-one distant coupling, where a partner's recent history can overturn a cell's future.
GOL-006
Fire Wings
A compact ignition opens into recurring wing-like fronts as alternating weighted-neighborhood rules meet enforced rest, finite life, and a directional history clock.
GOL-011
Half-Life
Standard Life runs beneath a second birth pathway: every death lengthens a cell's personal wait before local living neighbors can call it back, while exact local crowding can erase that accumulated history.
GOL-015
Rewind Life
Each position keeps a private occupancy history: local crowding can send it backward through its own past until another neighbor count, the oldest retained state, or a duration cap releases it.
GOL-016
Countertime
Every cell watches its own rolling binary history: when that history matches its own trigger, it crosses to a permanent distant counterpart and plays there backward.
GOL-017
Switchboard
Permanent distant pairs exchange their present dead/alive states on a configurable beat or local-neighbor trigger, then ordinary Life reacts to the fully mixed field.
GOL-018
Compass Rose
Cells that start dead follow Life. Cells that start alive carry a rotating opening pattern and live when either their compass matches or Life permits it.
GOL-027
Wandering Memory
Living and dead entities wander with private compasses and rolling memories. Shared codes and repeating segments in their life histories trigger travel or settlement.
GOL-029
Resurrection
Every living and dead spell leaves a weight in time. Neighbors sum their living and dead days to decide resurrection, survival and death.
GOL-034
Rations
Life stores food to survive isolation and crowding. A second rule gates birth and survival by the food held in neighboring cells.
GOL-036
Nested Drift
Cells absorb isolated neighbors, then resolve stalled ingestion toward neighbors with greater nested contents. Remaining clusters move and unfold; optional aging adds births and trapped-cell expiration.
Movement & steering
GOL-005
Motive Field
Persistent motives send crowded units down a smoothed energy substrate and isolated units upward, while remembered arrows carry momentum through local ties.
GOL-007
Lightning Conductor
Persistent charges spend finite energy crossing a seeded conductive medium, writing sudden paths of life over a slower synchronous cellular field.
GOL-008
Common Body
Dense local life binds into temporary blue bodies that share an asymmetry-derived heading, transpose together, deform on contact, and dissolve back into ordinary Life.
GOL-010
Pivot Life
Standard Life grows beneath isolated local pivots whose neighbor counts select different rotations or mirrors, while overlapping transformation claims honestly rest.
GOL-012
Free Cell
The grid becomes a habitat rather than the organism: independent units reproduce, move, stay, or die from local crowding, following authored compass preferences through deterministic conflicts.
GOL-019
Safe Passage
Isolated cells follow their compass and cannot die. Other cells seek adjacent survival opportunities; competing claims cancel movement.
GOL-020
Shared Fever
Dense clusters catch a shared fever, move together by their collective compasses, then face ordinary Life during a mandatory break.
GOL-022
Hidden Current
Invisible viruses follow living sight lines. Living hosts shelter nearby life, coupling a hidden moving layer to the familiar rhythms of Life.
GOL-023
Open Compass
Organisms coast until blocked, then seek sparse sight lines with private rotating compasses. Crowded sight lines activate configurable Life births and survival.
GOL-027
Wandering Memory
Living and dead entities wander with private compasses and rolling memories. Shared codes and repeating segments in their life histories trigger travel or settlement.
GOL-028
Drifting Chains
Supported chains shed their oldest members as they grow. Travel by rotating compasses or fixed initial directions, and return dead travelers to their original locations.
GOL-030
Orbital Drift
Travelers bend toward nearby headings. Distance-weighted influence steers eight compass directions, while collisions preserve every cell.
GOL-031
Orbital Bloom
Travelers align nearby headings, reproduce behind their shared direction, and die by local crowding. Freedom to move can protect life.
GOL-032
Crowd Drift
Life reshapes the crowds that steer travelers. Switch between neighboring and personal crowding, configure birth and survival, or turn Life off to keep movement alone.
GOL-035
Pocket Life
Life cells ingest lone neighbors into eight pockets. Hosts release stored children along fixed headings, with timed neutrality and one-turn deployment immunity.
GOL-036
Nested Drift
Cells absorb isolated neighbors, then resolve stalled ingestion toward neighbors with greater nested contents. Remaining clusters move and unfold; optional aging adds births and trapped-cell expiration.
GOL-037
Counterpart
Death sends a successor toward a counterpart. Carried eight-bit histories can redirect each identity toward the nearest living neighbor of its former target, creating independent links and shared pursuits.
GOL-038
Pursuit
Cells pursue random living targets, wait at obstructions, then try a rotating compass for escape. Explore waiting time and one-to-three-square pursuit with complete presets.
Collective behavior
GOL-008
Common Body
Dense local life binds into temporary blue bodies that share an asymmetry-derived heading, transpose together, deform on contact, and dissolve back into ordinary Life.
GOL-020
Shared Fever
Dense clusters catch a shared fever, move together by their collective compasses, then face ordinary Life during a mandatory break.
GOL-024
Symmetry Lines
Opposite living pairs sustain cells, while two living samples along a ray extend life. Compose symmetry and direction, with an optional additive Game of Life layer.
GOL-025
Mutual Aid
Neighbors forecast their next turn: shared prospects grant life, while a doomed neighborhood drains it away. Compose ordinary Life, support and drain.
GOL-026
Density Layers
Local crowding chooses the law: two nested neighborhood counts select among three Life rules. Compose the radii, thresholds, births and survival.
GOL-028
Drifting Chains
Supported chains shed their oldest members as they grow. Travel by rotating compasses or fixed initial directions, and return dead travelers to their original locations.
GOL-030
Orbital Drift
Travelers bend toward nearby headings. Distance-weighted influence steers eight compass directions, while collisions preserve every cell.
GOL-031
Orbital Bloom
Travelers align nearby headings, reproduce behind their shared direction, and die by local crowding. Freedom to move can protect life.
GOL-032
Crowd Drift
Life reshapes the crowds that steer travelers. Switch between neighboring and personal crowding, configure birth and survival, or turn Life off to keep movement alone.
GOL-033
Life Force
The whole field's living fraction changes the rules of survival and birth. Recorded minimum stays moderate rapid births and deaths.
Birth, death & renewal
GOL-001
Standard Life
Conway's original B3/S23 rule is the collection's reference point: familiar enough to enter immediately, but inexhaustible once it starts moving.
GOL-006
Fire Wings
A compact ignition opens into recurring wing-like fronts as alternating weighted-neighborhood rules meet enforced rest, finite life, and a directional history clock.
GOL-008
Common Body
Dense local life binds into temporary blue bodies that share an asymmetry-derived heading, transpose together, deform on contact, and dissolve back into ordinary Life.
GOL-011
Half-Life
Standard Life runs beneath a second birth pathway: every death lengthens a cell's personal wait before local living neighbors can call it back, while exact local crowding can erase that accumulated history.
GOL-012
Free Cell
The grid becomes a habitat rather than the organism: independent units reproduce, move, stay, or die from local crowding, following authored compass preferences through deterministic conflicts.
GOL-019
Safe Passage
Isolated cells follow their compass and cannot die. Other cells seek adjacent survival opportunities; competing claims cancel movement.
GOL-023
Open Compass
Organisms coast until blocked, then seek sparse sight lines with private rotating compasses. Crowded sight lines activate configurable Life births and survival.
GOL-027
Wandering Memory
Living and dead entities wander with private compasses and rolling memories. Shared codes and repeating segments in their life histories trigger travel or settlement.
GOL-028
Drifting Chains
Supported chains shed their oldest members as they grow. Travel by rotating compasses or fixed initial directions, and return dead travelers to their original locations.
GOL-029
Resurrection
Every living and dead spell leaves a weight in time. Neighbors sum their living and dead days to decide resurrection, survival and death.
GOL-031
Orbital Bloom
Travelers align nearby headings, reproduce behind their shared direction, and die by local crowding. Freedom to move can protect life.
GOL-032
Crowd Drift
Life reshapes the crowds that steer travelers. Switch between neighboring and personal crowding, configure birth and survival, or turn Life off to keep movement alone.
GOL-033
Life Force
The whole field's living fraction changes the rules of survival and birth. Recorded minimum stays moderate rapid births and deaths.
GOL-034
Rations
Life stores food to survive isolation and crowding. A second rule gates birth and survival by the food held in neighboring cells.
GOL-035
Pocket Life
Life cells ingest lone neighbors into eight pockets. Hosts release stored children along fixed headings, with timed neutrality and one-turn deployment immunity.
GOL-037
Counterpart
Death sends a successor toward a counterpart. Carried eight-bit histories can redirect each identity toward the nearest living neighbor of its former target, creating independent links and shared pursuits.
Machine-readable catalog · Reproducibility, access and attribution