Life is not your average two-player game. You and the computer work together, with you making decisions, and the computer doing calculations. You define a board pattern and then watch as the computer projects future generations of this pattern. Even with some of the most trivial initial patterns, you can obtain results that are both beautiful and intriguing.

Cells (squares) on a rectangular grid are either empty or full (occupied). The next generation is calculated by counting the number of occupied neighbors, up to a maximum of eight. Fewer than two neighbors, or more than three, results in death: the cell will be empty in the next generation. No change is made if there are exactly two neighbors. Exactly three neighbors results in a birth: the cell will be occupied. This updating is "instantaneous" and does not change squares before everybodys fate has been determined.