Conway's Game of Life's rules dont apply properly

it fixes the issue I believe that the Hashlife algorithm could help you.
It gives the idea of using a quadtree (tree data structure in which each internal node has exactly four children) to keep the data, and then it uses hash tables to store the nodes of the quadtree.

it helps some times Yes, cells in Game of Life may only be 'alive' or 'dead'. If they have never been alive, they are dead.

may help you . you code is a little messed up the easy fixes would be to change while (lifes != 0): replace the while with an if and if you insist on making it run with recursion, pass the lifes as a parameter
remove the line lifes = 4 and instead change the function definition to: def hangman(lifes=4): (i left it as lifes, but the english word is lives) then all you have to change is this part print ("Wrong, you have", lifes, "lifes left") hangman() into print ("Wrong, you have", lifes, "lifes left") hangman(lifes)

wish of those help If you're not familiar with Conway's Game of Life, a quick introduction might be necessary:
The Game of Life is a cellular automaton devised by John Conway back in 1970. Life, for short, is essentially a simulation of the simple dynamics of life itself --- birth, reproduction, and death. With a given seed or initial input, Life will play out by itself and, based on the core rules you are seeking help on, will decide what cells live, reproduce, or die.

Hope this helps You need to keep the old board and generate a new board (called generation) with the rules.
Then skip the old board an use the new one.