Nice! I love cellular automata. For my game I used a couple layers of noise and a simple floodfill but I considered flowers growing and dying using cellular automata rules. I notice a comment about the grid; its a necessary evil but there are always ways to “hide it” a little. In my case I use overlapped grids of different sizes and a random offset when placing. Not sure if it may work in pixel art but now I can’t stop thinking about cellular automata in hex grids.