Dev tools · September 17, 2023
Conway's Game of Chess
Chess, but each square also follows the rules of Conway's Game of Life. Only your own pieces count as neighbours when deciding births/deaths. For births, an empty square must have 3 neighbours for 2 consecutive turns. For deaths, a piece must have 3 neighbours for 3 consecutive turns. This is a simple proof of concept I made with python and curses. You can play with a friend locally or over a socket connection. Controls: Arrow keys to move the cursor, enter/space to select and move a piece, u or backspace to undo a move, r to redo a move, q or escape to quit, s to perform a move…
Conway's Game of Chess launched on September 17, 2023 with 80 votes, #1,167 of 4,228 launches that month and more than 90% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 3 years on.
In plain words
Conway's Game of Chess combines traditional chess with Conway's Game of Life mechanics, where pieces on each square evolve based on neighbor counts. Players can spawn new pieces when an empty square has three neighbors for two consecutive turns, and pieces disappear after having fewer than two or more than three neighbors for three turns. This Python-based proof of concept supports local two-player games and remote play over socket connections, with controls for cursor movement, piece selection, undo/redo, and optional Stockfish integration.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
Conway's Game of Chess (moved to https://github.com/elesiuta/conways-game-of-chess) - conway_chess.py
In the maker’s words, at launch
Chess, but each square also follows the rules of Conway's Game of Life. Only your own pieces count as neighbours when deciding births/deaths. For births, an empty square must have 3 neighbours for 2 consecutive turns. For deaths, a piece must have <2 or >3 neighbours for 3 consecutive turns. This is a simple…
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Game of Life on non-square topologies with 2^32 update rules2022 · github.com · ▲69Hi HN, when learning Golang (and topology), I ported a simple GOL in C (https://github.com/Jeadie/GoL) into Go. I then added a bunch of features - Playing on other fundamental polygons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_polygon#Examples_o...) - Considering all possible update rules (of which, there are many). Looking to get back to this project soon. Would love some feedback + ideas.
- MPMulti-player Competitive Conway's Game of Life2014 · gameoflifetotalwar.com · ▲85
Game of Life in 32 bytes of assembler2020 · pouet.net · ▲267pouët.net - your online demoscene resource
- SGStacked Game of LifeFeb 2026 · stacked-game-of-life.koenvangilst.nl · ▲195
https://github.com/vnglst/stacked-game-of-life
Rust Implementation of Conway's Game of Life2020 · github.com · ▲76Simple Rust implementation of Conway's Game of Life - brundonsmith/life
Conway's Game of Life in TypeScript's type system2023 · github.com · ▲186TypeScript playground: https://www.typescriptlang.org/play?#code/KYDwDg9gTgLgBDAnmY...
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Source: Show HN post ↗ · launch text quoted in part
