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Life Garden

Gen 0 How it works ↓
中文

Species

Presets

Shortcuts

  • Space Play / Pause
  • → Step forward
  • ← Step back
  • R Clear grid
  • 1–4 Select species
  • Click to place, drag to paint

How it works

The garden has two layers. Plants grow on the ground and never move. Animals stand on top of them and do nothing but move, eat and breed.

Plants are a cellular automaton

Every generation each plant counts the plants in the 8 cells around it.

  • Grass spreads. Bare ground with exactly 3 plants beside it grows grass.
  • Grass is crowded out. A plant with 4 or more neighbours dies. It never dies of loneliness, which is the one place this parts company with Conway's Game of Life.
  • Grass creeps. Bare ground beside grass may sprout on its own. Grass in bloom is four times as likely to seed it, and a bee working the patch multiplies whatever the chance was by six.
  • Flowers are temporary. Grass that has stood 8 generations comes into bloom, and 6 generations later the bloom is over and it is plain grass again.

Animals carry one number

Its energy. Every generation, each animal in turn:

  • Spends 1 energy. At 0 it dies.
  • Runs, if it can see something that eats it. A frightened animal does nothing else that generation.
  • Steps one cell towards the nearest food it can see, and eats what it lands on. If it sees nothing it wanders.
  • Digests. After a meal it will not eat again for a few generations, which is what stops a herd stripping the board bare.
  • Splits in two once it is full, sharing its energy with the young.
Animal Eats Sees Runs from Meal Digests Splits at
🐝 Bee nectar 5 — 12 4 26
🐇 Rabbit grass 4 foxes, at 3 16 9 88
🦊 Fox rabbits 4 — 40 14 80
  • Eating sets a plant back one stage. A grazed bloom drops to plain grass; plain grass is grazed down to bare ground. A meadow in flower feeds animals without being destroyed by them.
  • A rabbit sees a fox later than the fox sees the rabbit. Both move one cell a generation, so prey that spotted a hunter as soon as it was spotted could never be caught.
  • The garden is not the whole world. Seeds blow in over the fence, and now and then an animal wanders in at the edge — but only a kind that has lived here before, and only if there is already food for it. A board this small cannot hold a food chain up on its own.