Conway's Game of Life, also known as the Game of Life or simply Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. It is the best-known example of a cellular automaton. The "game" is actually a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, needing no input from human players. One interacts with the Game of Life by creating an initial configuration and observing how it evolves.
- Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies (referred to as underpopulation or exposure).
- Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies (referred to as overpopulation or overcrowding).
- Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives, unchanged, to the next generation.
- Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours will come to life.