This strongly reminds me of The Glass Bead Game (Das Glasperlenspiel) by Herman Hesse[1]. The idea of simplifying and restricting the creative space into a grid

This strongly reminds me of The Glass Bead Game (Das Glasperlenspiel) by Herman Hesse[1]. The idea of simplifying and restricting the creative space into a grid, but then assigning abstract value to the grid (e.g. game of life, minesweeper) seems to be a persistent meme in computers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Bead_Game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Bead_Game