Petri Dish

Petri Dish is a game that lets you experiment with particles to create simulated life. Saying that may be taking it a bit far, but its still a fantastic example of cellular automation. Watching particles governed by a simple set of rules grow into complex patterns and life like behaviors is fascinating and oddly soothing. With the default settings you will notice a few cell like structures form. These cells have their own complex life cycle, and they reproduce. You can adjust the particle motion laws to discover other odd universes that may produce life, so if you like cellular automation you'll find a lot to do here. If not, this is a perfect place to learn about and experiment with it.

Controlls:
Movement - WASD
Zoom - Mouse Scroll Wheel
Open/Close Settings Tab - V
Play/Pause Simulation - Space
Reset Simulation - Left Control

Every time the simulation is reset, the particles are placed in a random position following a grid pattern. Each particle is governed by these rules: Travel at a constant speed, rotate. The rotation(spin) of a particle is determined by the position and orientation of the particles surrounding it. To save on a lot of details, the spin will cause particles to move to where there are more particles, but each particle is only aware of other particles in a radius around them so if a particle gets stuck by itself it will essentially stay in the same spot due to its speed and rotation. Those super simple rules give birth to everything you see in the simulation, and all those rules can be edited and played with in-game.

NOTE: You don't have to use the sliders for the settings input. You can click on the numbers, backspace, then type in your values.