I played around a lot with cellular automata over a year ago and made the general case for game of life [1] but also other variants [2] and [3] which I consider especially beautiful.

[1] https://www.arnevogel.com/life-like-cellular-automaton/ [2] https://www.arnevogel.com/brians-brain-cellular-automaton/ [3] https://www.arnevogel.com/cyclic-cellular-automaton/