In Conway's Game of Life, a pattern is any specific arrangement of living cells on the grid. Over the decades since the Game of Life was invented in 1970, the community has discovered and catalogued thousands of patterns with fascinating behaviors.
Patterns are classified by their long-term behavior. Some stay perfectly still, some oscillate, some fly across the grid, and some evolve for thousands of generations before finally settling down. Conway Canvas includes 120+ patterns across all major categories.
Still Lifes are patterns that never change. Every living cell has exactly 2 or 3 neighbors, and no dead cell has exactly 3 living neighbors. They are the stable building blocks of the Game of Life.
Conway Canvas includes over 25 Still Lifes, from the tiny 4-cell Block to more exotic forms like the Shillelagh and Integral Sign.
Oscillators are patterns that return to their initial state after a fixed number of generations, called the period. They pulse, blink or rotate in place without moving across the grid.
Oscillators range from period 2 (Blinker) to astronomically high periods discovered by researchers. Conway Canvas includes a curated selection of the most important oscillators across different periods.
Spaceships are patterns that move across the grid. After a certain number of generations, they reappear in the same shape but displaced by one or more cells. The speed of a spaceship is measured relative to the maximum possible speed, called c (one cell per generation).
The Glider is arguably the most famous Game of Life pattern. Discovered in 1970, it is often used as a symbol for the hacker community and even appears in some programming logos. In Conway Canvas, you can stamp gliders onto the canvas and watch them fly.
Methuselahs are small patterns that take an unexpectedly long time to stabilize. Despite starting with only a handful of cells, they can evolve for hundreds or thousands of generations, producing complex interactions and debris before eventually settling into a stable configuration of Still Lifes, Oscillators and Spaceships.
Methuselahs are fascinating because they demonstrate how simple initial conditions can lead to immense complexity — a core theme of the Game of Life. The R-pentomino was the first pattern discovered that defied easy analysis, and it helped fuel early interest in the Game of Life.
Guns are patterns that periodically emit spaceships. They stay in a fixed position but shoot a stream of gliders or other spaceships at regular intervals.
The Gosper Glider Gun, discovered by Bill Gosper in 1970, was the first finite pattern proven to grow without limit. Its discovery won a $50 prize offered by John Conway himself, who had conjectured that no such pattern could exist. It also proved that the Game of Life is capable of unbounded growth, a key step toward proving its Turing completeness.
Puffers are patterns that move like spaceships but leave debris behind. As they travel across the grid, they produce a trail of Still Lifes, Oscillators or other objects in their wake.
Puffers come in many forms — some leave a clean trail of Blocks, others produce chaotic debris that takes many generations to settle. They are closely related to Guns: a Gun can be thought of as a stationary Puffer.
Conway Canvas includes 120+ patterns across all categories, ready to explore. Open the Stamp Library, browse by category, search by name, and stamp any pattern onto the infinite canvas.
You can also create your own patterns, save them as custom stamps, and import/export using the standard RLE format used by the Game of Life community.