Pretty cool! Simulating artificial cells and observing their complex emergent dynamics has been an interest of mine
On a similar vein, have you seen this before?
https://github.com/chrxh/alien
This is very cute. I don't think I'd ever thought of having a cellular automaton where there's some global state that can change that influences the local cell rules. Would be interesting to add more control/energy variables like for collecting resources/food.
At the bottom is a gem about how can we design video games or other entertainment from bottom up rules. That's quite a question to think about. Like imagine Tetris for example, but with bottom up rules. It could be a totally different game!
Sick! I've been building a little electronics project to render the ising model on an lcd screen, might have to do one for the potts model now too =D had never heard of it before.