# NEON Game of Life — Neon cellular-automata sandbox

> Zero-player simulation game with neon graphics and customizable rulesets. (iPhone/iPad app by Enzo Maruffa.)

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/neon-game-of-life/id1465996787 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`)
- Developer: [Enzo Maruffa](https://appshunter.io/developer/1465996786)
- Category: Games, Entertainment, Simulation
- Price: Free
- Rating: 4.40/5 from 7 App Store ratings · 5 written reviews indexed
- Age rating: 4+
- Requires: iOS 18.0 · 26 MB
- Languages: American English
- Released: 2019-05-31
- Data updated: 2026-07-19
- Monetization: free
- User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/neon-game-of-life/id1465996787/reviews.md

## What is NEON Game of Life?

NEON is Conway's Game of Life, reborn in neon. Paint a handful of glowing cells, hit play, and watch them breed, drift, and collide — gliders streak across the grid, pulsars breathe, and a Gosper gun throws spaceships into the dark.

It's a sandbox, not a screensaver. Every tool for building and studying patterns is free.

THE SIMULATION — free
— 12 rulesets: Conway (B3/S23), HighLife, Day & Night, Amoeba, Mazectric, Coral, Diamoeba and more — plus a B/S rule builder for your own totalistic rules.
— Toroidal grids sized to your device, driven by a GPU compute kernel that keeps up.
— A per-cell procedural neon shader — no sprites; every living cell is drawn live.

PAINT & EDIT — free
— Paint or erase with a fingertip; a live loupe magnifies exactly the cell under your finger.
— Region select: marquee any rectangle, then copy, cut, clear, save as a snippet, or export as RLE. Paste it anywhere.
— 20 canonical snippets (block, glider, LWSS, pulsar, queen-bee shuttle…) with live toroidal previews. Drag to stamp; rotate or flip before you drop.
— Symmetry brush — 2-, 4-, or 8-fold mirrored drawing.
— Full LifeWiki RLE round-trip: paste, fetch from a URL, or open a .rle file, plus a raw-text editor over the live grid.

STUDY — free
— A 15-pattern Discover catalog: Gosper gun, Simkin gun, acorn, R-pentomino, replicator, garden of Eden — with provenance.
— Timeline scrubber — pause and rewind all the way back to the first generation.
— Population sparkline, live cell count, generation counter, and stability detection (still life / period-N oscillator / extinction).
— Minimap and stats HUD, both toggleable right on the canvas.

SHARE — free
— Pattern links: every soup encodes into a neongameoflife:// URL you can drop in a message. No server, no account.
— Record the canvas to MP4 or GIF. Full iPad keyboard shortcuts.

NEON PRO — optional
A one-time purchase, family-shareable, no subscription. Every tool for building and studying patterns is free; Pro is the finish — more speed, surface, and instrumentation.
— Fast-forward to 1,000 generations/second.
— Arbitrary grid sizes and a 16×16 custom snippet creator.
— iCloud sync of your library across devices.
— An interactive Home Screen widget and a Dynamic Island Live Activity, each running a live mini-sim.
— Pattern labels that identify gliders, oscillators, and still lifes and track them as they move.
— An activity heatmap that renders cell-flip frequency as a cool-to-hot overlay.
— A 3D time-stack you can orbit — every generation stacked in space, from a single instanced draw.
— A neon palette editor, animated themes, and cell trails.
— 15 alternate app icons drawn from classic patterns.

PRIVACY
No accounts, no tracking, no third-party SDKs, no analytics. Your patterns live on your device and, if you opt in, in your own iCloud private database. Share links carry the pattern inline — nothing touches a server.

Built in Swift + SwiftUI, from a 2019 SpriteKit experiment rebuilt from the compute kernel up.

## Key features

- Zero-player simulation
- Neon graphics
- 80x80 grid
- Pattern checkpoints
- Pattern sharing
- Multiple rulesets

## Recent user reviews (5 of 5)

All indexed reviews: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/neon-game-of-life/id1465996787/reviews.md

### 3/5 — Fun

*2023-12-28*

Fun but mechanics are wrong

### 5/5 — Yuh

*2021-08-18*

Yep

### 5/5 — Awesome

*2021-05-25*

The only flaw I can think of is that you can’t drag your finger to place live cells

### 5/5 — Best CGOL on the App Store!

*2020-08-09*

This game has so much content and no ads which is unheard of!

### 5/5 — This is a great game

*2020-08-09*

This is a pretty good game. It has great zoom, and good panning abilities. It also has amazing time lapse (you can adjust it a lot), the best thing of all is the pause button. I do like that you can change the rule set (like Conway’s, Highlife and more). I do request a bigger map (its big enough for various sizes of just not massive ones) at least 2x the size like a 160x160 grid instead of an 80x80 grid. The second best thing is that there is no ads! I do recommend this to anyone who likes Conway’s Game of Life.

## Frequently asked questions about NEON Game of Life

### What is Neon Game of Life?

Neon Game of Life is a zero-player game where you set up initial patterns on a grid and watch them evolve based on defined rules. It features a neon aesthetic and allows for pattern sharing.

### Does Neon Game of Life have multiplayer?

Neon Game of Life is a zero-player game, meaning it does not support direct multiplayer interaction. However, you can share your created patterns with friends to let them experience your setups.

### Can I play Neon Game of Life offline?

The provided data does not specify offline play capabilities. However, as a simulation-based game, it is likely to function without an internet connection once the initial setup is complete.

### What are the rulesets in Neon Game of Life?

Neon Game of Life allows you to go beyond the standard Conway's Game of Life rules. It supports various rulesets that have been created and tested over the years, offering limitless possibilities for simulation.

### How large is the grid in Neon Game of Life?

Neon Game of Life features an 80x80 grid, providing a substantial area for creating and observing complex patterns and simulations.

### What is the age rating for Neon Game of Life?

Neon Game of Life has an age rating of 4+, making it suitable for a wide range of players.

### How often is Neon Game of Life updated?

Neon Game of Life was last updated on June 1, 2019, with version 1.1.1. The frequency of future updates is not specified in the provided data.

### Does Neon Game of Life have ads?

Neon Game of Life is ad-free, as indicated by the 'hasAds' flag being false in the application data.

## Version history (last 4 releases)

### 3.0.1 — 2026-07-10

NEON 3.0.1 — polish & fixes.

— Paint now lands exactly under your fingertip, and the loupe shows precisely the cell you're drawing.
— The 3D time-stack runs on a new engine: it handles big grids and long histories smoothly, builds in the background, and can be cancelled — no more freezes or crashes.
— Rewind the timeline all the way back to the first generation.
— Higher top speed — up to 1,000 generations/second with Neon Pro.
— Create custom grids up to 10,000×10,000 (with a heads-up when a size may be too big for your device).
— Toggle the minimap, stats HUD, and cell trails right on the canvas.
— Clearer labels on the top-bar buttons.
— Steadier iCloud sync.
— The selection toolbar no longer hides behind the stats panel.

### 3.0 — 2026-07-10

NEON 3.0 turns the sandbox into a studio — and every pattern-building tool is free.

COMPOSE (free)
— Region select: marquee any rectangle, then copy, cut, clear, save it as a snippet, or export it as RLE. Paste it anywhere.
— Rotate or flip a snippet before you stamp it.
— Symmetry brush — draw with 2-, 4-, or 8-fold mirroring.
— A live population sparkline joins the stats HUD, next to the stability detector.

LENS (Neon Pro)
— Pattern labels: the board identifies gliders, oscillators, and still lifes and tracks them as they move.
— Activity heatmap: cell-flip frequency rendered as a cool-to-hot overlay — see the engine, not just the output.

FIXED
— Six named rulesets (HighLife, Amoeba, Coral, Diamoeba, Mazectric, Walled Cities) were running mirrored. Corrected — the Replicator actually replicates now.
— iCloud sync no longer duplicates your library across devices.
— The Home Screen widget shows the real pattern after you play and save.
— Full-board zoom-out restored on large grids, plus history-scrubber, paint, and recording fixes.

Neon Pro also carries 300 gen/s fast-forward, arbitrary grid sizes, a custom snippet creator, iCloud sync, an interactive widget, a Dynamic Island Live Activity, a palette editor, animated themes, cell trails, a 3D time-stack, and 15 app icons. The simulator itself stays free.

### 1.1.1 — 2019-06-01

Hey!

This is a quick update that fixes some bugs with soup saving/sharing!

### 1.0 — 2019-05-30

No release notes.

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## More apps by Enzo Maruffa

- [Deliver Fever -Restaurant Game](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/deliver-fever-restaurant-game/id1502566216)

All apps by Enzo Maruffa: https://appshunter.io/developer/1465996786

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*Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-07-19.*