Game of Life: Playground

Conway's cellular automaton

Free · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.

Classic Conway's Game of Life with 736 famous patterns built in. Watch simple rules grow into complex worlds. The Game of Life is the cellular automaton devised by mathematician John Conway in 1970. Each cell lives or dies based only on how many of its eight neighbors are alive, yet these simple rules produce still lifes, blinking oscillators, spaceships that travel across the grid, and even guns that fire an endless stream of gliders. It is a classic introduction to complex systems, emergence and the theory of computation. BUILT-IN PATTERN LIBRARY - 736 famous patterns from the Life Lexicon, organized into still lifes, oscillators, spaceships, guns, puffers and rakes, methuselahs, and other structures - Period, speed and size shown for every pattern, with search by name - Load a glider, the Gosper glider gun or a spaceship with one tap CREATE YOUR OWN - Tap the grid to add or remove cells - Set the grid width and height anywhere from 2 to 256 - Fill the grid at random, or clear it and start over - Pinch to zoom and drag to pan for a closer look CONTROL THE EVOLUTION - Four speeds: 2, 4 and 10 generations per second, plus a 60-generations-per-second lightning mode - Two boundaries: wrapping edges, where cells leaving one side return on the other, or fixed edges with empty space beyond SAVE AND SHARE - Keep your creations in My Patterns inside the app - Open and save standard .cells pattern files to exchange them with other Life programs PRIVATE BY DESIGN - No ads, no account, no network access, no permissions, and no personal data collected - Suitable for all ages, in the classroom or on your own Built-in patterns are adapted from the Life Lexicon by Stephen A. Silver et al. and licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).

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    Information

    Seller
    紫剑 吕
    Size
    8.2 MB
    Category
    Education
    Compatibility
    Requires iOS 18.0 or later.
    • iPhone
      Requires iOS 18.0 or later.
    • iPad
      Requires iPadOS 18.0 or later.
    • Mac
      Requires macOS 15.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.
    Languages
    English and Simplified Chinese
    Age Rating
    4+
    Copyright
    © 2026 Zijian Lyu
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