Conway's Game of Life



Conway's Game of Life is a mind-bogglingly complex universe-simulator with mind-bogglingly simple rules, invented by the mathematician John Conway. It is sometimes described as a 0-player game in that, once the initial board is set up, you just start it running, leave it alone, and watch the patterns emerge.

Based around an infinite grid and a few simple rules, it gives a new meaning to emergent complexity. Each tile on the grid can exist in one of two states: the default "dead" state, or "live". Given a blank, dead grid, a player then seeds the canvas with little colonies of "live" squares. A live square that is neighbored by fewer than two, or more than three, other live squares dies. A dead square that is bordered by exactly three live squares becomes live. Many websites allow you to tinker around with Life patterns, two of them can be found here and here.

Not to be confused with The Game of Life, Milton-Bradley's board game.

Literature

 * Tea with the Black Dragon by R. A. MacAvoy has a metaphorically-significant scene in which the protagonist is introduced to the game.
 * Glory Season by David Brin features this game with the variation of being played as a contest, with each side getting part of the board to use, with the goal being eliminating the other side.
 * In Lyndon Hardy's 1988 novel Riddle of the Seven Realms, a character creates a dimension that operates under these rules, even calling it "the realm of the conways."

Music

 * Infocalypse's album "Annexia" has a typical Life pattern on the cover.

Video Games

 * Kingdom of Loathing has a mushroom farming minigame that follows the same rules (although with more than one kind of mushroom), but the board is only 4x4, making it impossible to create any particularly interesting patterns.
 * One of the intro cinematics for Darwinia is a simulation of Life, with the added caveat that each Darwinian will die after a set number of years no matter what. As it's incredibly difficult not to get attached to the little guys while playing Darwinia, seeing the last "block" and "spaceship" formations settle, flicker, and die can be very haunting.
 * Revival "Game of Life" is a spellcard used by Eirin Yagokoro in Touhou 8: Imperishable Night.
 * An element in the Boulder Dash clone Rocks N Diamonds.

Web Comics

 * Square Root of Minus Garfield's "Garfield, Infinite Canvas, and The Game of Life", in which a Garfield comic about not having a life is used as the starting state for the Game of Life. Also, "Conway's Game of Death", in which a stable pixellated portrait of Jon is destroyed by a glider.
 * Freefall has one panel with classic patterns including Glider (presumably a poster or other advertisement In-Universe) as Lampshade Hanging.