A LITTLE LIFE. A LITTLE CHAOS.
Plant the beginnings. Set nature in motion.See what survives.
Each green cell is alive. It survives with two or three living neighbors. An empty land cell with exactly three neighbors is born. The oceans form natural boundaries.
Living ecosystem adds small pioneer colonies every eight generations, giving life a chance to return after a disaster. Classic Conway uses only B3/S23, with no spontaneous growth. Seed a glider or pulsar to watch the rules at work.
Populate adds living population cells in small four-cell colonies, with space between them. Each colony can sustain itself on empty land under Conway’s rules. Drag to build more colonies or increase the brush size to cover more ground. Nearby life and disasters can still change them. Populate also restores damaged cells under each colony.
In Living ecosystem, three living neighbors beside a water cell can launch a boat. Each landmass supports up to five boats. Harbors wait between launches. Boats sail slowly, change course occasionally, and travel away from shore and plant a four-cell colony on landfall where the terrain is healthy. Collisions, meteors, storms, and tsunamis can sink them. Longitudes wrap, and crossing either pole continues at the opposite longitude near the same pole. Classic Conway has no boats.
Map 42 uses geographic desert, forest, savanna, steppe, tundra, and ice regions in the original color palette. Biomes are generalized at half-degree resolution. Data: RESOLVE Ecoregions 2017, Dinerstein et al., CC BY 4.0; rasterized and adapted to the game’s coastlines.
Select a disaster, then place it on the map. Fires spread only with three burning neighbors and burn out independently; meteors arrive from offscreen, leave smoke trails, and sometimes split into three fragments before impact; tornadoes and hurricanes travel; earthquakes fracture land and offshore quakes launch waves; tsunamis expand toward the coast. Hurricanes and tsunamis start in the ocean. Meteor and fragment impacts in water also launch tsunamis that flood land, kill its population, and extinguish fires. Incoming surges keep pushing water ashore before falling away. Larger waves overrun coastal hills and leave lasting damage. Floods follow connected low ground, stop at higher terrain, and drain back toward the sea. Flooded cells cannot be populated or settled until dry. Storm damage can occasionally ignite dry land. Intensity changes the affected area.
Damaged land recovers over 65–180 generations. Use Restore to heal dry land immediately, then Populate to bring life back. Disasters advance with the simulation; pause to set up an experiment, then play or step to watch.
An imaginative cellular sandbox, not a scientific climate model. Reset clears life, scars, and disasters while keeping your map.