Last updated on November 27th, 2025 at 09:10 am
Game of Life Cellular Automata – Education Game Review
Game of Life Cellular Automata is a Education/Board/Simulation game from Nathan Pool, first launched in 17th August 2015.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 74+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Game of Life Cellular Automata Stand Out
A simple implementation of the cellular automata Game of Life, as described by John Conway in 1970.
For iPhone and iPad.
This Education game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Game of Life Cellular Automata is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 18th September 2023
Recent improvements include:
Significant improvements including a larger board and reduced memory usage.
Download & Availability
Game of Life Cellular Automata is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Game of Life Cellular Automata on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
This app was perfect for demonstrating the Game of Life to our homeschool math circle. It has just enough functionality to be useful and engaging. It lacks advanced features like selecting, copying, pasting, color by generation, different rule sets, and larger machines, but for the price the current functionality is fantastic. And thank you for not filling it with adware. Very classy.
This is a wonderful game that shows the very interesting properties of John Conway's game of life. We believe that this is the best game of life application on the App Store. We would appreciate a setting to turn on the HighLife variant, where cells are also born with 6 neighbors along with 3. We have been using this app for many years and we appreciate the developer's prolonged support. Thank you.
The game is pretty fire. Its kinda hard to get a working colony, but it would be cool if you could assign specific colors to different squares to make separate colonies. Also, it would be helpful to maybe have a optional tutorial to show the different machines you could build.
This game it was exactly how we imagined it and at the end of this open instruction to help us how to make an easy bomb . First make a three by three square. Then from the top center build two sells up and put one to the left.
Our creature is too big for the table . . Could we get a bigger table.
It would be perfect if the grid can be infinitely large(or arbitrarily large), anyway, 80 80 is too SMALL.
Its very good just wish there was no borders for bigger creations that dont fit on the current map.
Great app. The only thing is that at certain magnification, when the board is zoomed out, the grid disappears and it is not obvious where the border of the board is. It confused us at first as we did not know why the gliders would expire in what seemed to be a middle of the page – they just reached the border. Maybe a simple outline of the board is needed which is visible in the zoomed out view.
We love a good math game especially game of life, and its good, but it needs more pre builded creations and please add a thing where you can click your whole creation and move it.
The screenshots show that it is supposed to be where the delete button is, but its not there. Where is it? Other then that its pretty good and we like making different things like mediem and big sized space ships, and other stuff.
We would like to see – a rewind button – a way to copy and past – the ability to draw with dots – the ability to speed up time.
Very simplistic and bare bones. Hasnt had significant content update in over a year.
Just like most of the experiments/examples we have seen. Play and pause buttons.
Easily the best implementation on the App Store.
This is an awesome simulator. Some things that would make it even better: – it would be really cool to be able to save custom creations – the grid becomes invisible when zooming out too far, especially on the larger boards. It would be nice if it were always visible, or even if there was an option to make it visible or not – it seems to count every square manually placed as an iteration, which should not be the case – it should start out in the center of the board instead of the top left. We always find ourselves zooming out and finding the center manually so that the walls are less likely to affect the results (we are using the app on an iPhone 12 Pro) All that said, this is a really nice and charmingly simple app :).
Neat to play around with and Im glad someone made this for mobile. Would like an infinite board but prolly wouldnt need it for anything im doing on our phone.
Or maybe not really even the basics. We could not find a way to restart or back up a sequence. It ran, it was over. Made it difficult to do repeat experiments. The demonstrations are interesting. Good that its free (somebodys early project?), but Id be willing to pay a couple of three dollars for a version of this with some experimental controls, if you know what we mean.
We've been using it for a bit and noticed a few problems you could fix, 1 you should be able to drag your finger to make the little dots/cells or whatever the squares are called, 2 there should be a infinite board, 3 there might already be a way to do this but go back to generation zero without having to press back arrow tons of times other then that good game.
It works, no bells or whistles just pure Conway for the most part. It has a nice rewind function and everything works perfectly. Plus no ads getting crammed in your face that we noticed.
Soooo close. But ultimately frustrating to play with for lack of two things: 1) A reset button. Right before you hit the play button, the app needs to capture a snapshot of the board, and then provide a button that allows you to go back to that snapshot, instead of having to single-step all the way back. 2) Save function. This is so frustrating. When you find a cool pattern, you want to save it. The app features a save folder, but the only thing in it is a handful of pre-loaded patterns. You cant add to it. These simple additions shouldnt be hard, and would double the enjoyment of this app.
Would be cool if you could save your creations, though.
To make your own: go into the Folder at bottom left, select one ofthe Board options at the top, tap whichever cells you like, then hit the Run button to see what happens. We would love to be able to change the rules of evolution to see what happens. Thanks for this! Very nicely done.
Most of the builds are technically glider guns.
An undo button, grid formation for the largest space, drawing, and a few more in-game formations would greatly improve the app.
How to make: Building size: 9×9 Vertical:build at the 5th column a 3 then a gap by 1then 1 then a gap by 1 again then a 3. Horizontal:build in the 5th row and build 3 squares (there is that middle peice again so we consider the next gap a 3 so put the gap in there) and then put The last 3 blocks in. Press the play button and volia! Valve: How to make: it is simple! Size: 4×2 or 4×4 4×2 version: put 1 square on the top for the 1st column, put 2 squares on the 2nd and 3rd columns and last but not least, put one more square on the bottom of the 4th column. 4×4 version: put two pieces in the exact middle for the 1st column then for the 2nd column put one on the top, for the 3rd column put one on the bottom, and for the fourth and final column, do the exact steps from column 1. Done! Carriage: Size: 3×3 How to build: put all three squares in the 1st column but the 2nd column requires you to put squares in the top 2 northern spots, and we move on to the 3rd column which requires you to repeat the steps from the 1st column.
Drawing, undo, and rules would make this perfect! But otherwise its awesome.
Id prefer the playing space to be infinite, and the largest setting has no grid. It could also need a undo button to go back a generation.
Being stuck with the Medium board size really limits what can be done on here. Im aware this isnt meant for large contraptions like clocks; but some small things dont have enough space to function anymore. Please bring back the Large board.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 3.0
- Size: 0.49 MB
- iOS: 12.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: Nathan Pool
Last updated: 18th September 2023 | Genre: Education, Board | Developer: Nathan Pool