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Vibe Lab·LIFE

Four rules. A whole universe.

Cells on a grid. A live cell with 2 or 3 neighbors lives. A dead cell with exactly 3 neighbors is born. That's it. Watch gliders, pulsars, and spaceships emerge from a five-cell seed. When the grid goes still, it re-seeds itself with random soup.

What it does

Each cell counts its 8 neighbors every generation and applies Conway's four rules: survive on 2–3 neighbors, die below, die above, be born on exactly 3 if dead.

In the real world

John Conway invented this in 1970 on a Go board. It turns out to be Turing-complete — you can build a working computer out of Life patterns. It's the cleanest example of complex behavior from simple rules.

Painted with these colors

Every VibeBoy lab paints with these 16 colors — the same palette PICO-8 made famous. Constraints are what make pixel art feel like pixel art.

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