A TerraBall Story

 I started making the game, TerraBall in 2020, at the start of Covid. The idea had been percolating for a while. I knew I wanted to make a game. A game like billiards, a game of variation, a game that would be changeable, and a game to bring people together.

I'm an artist and have traditionally painted and sculpted and built things. I started doing art full time in 2015. In 2017, I lost my studio in the Tubbs fire in Napa, CA. I lost everything that wasn't out at a show or exhibit. I had to start over. One thing the fires provided, was wood from trees, that needed to be taken down after the destruction. Some of them were great big redwoods. I saw the value in that wood and had them milled so I could make tables. Live edge redwood tables. I loved the first cuts off the mill. The wood pieces that still have the rounded edges. I wasn't quite sure how I would use them, but they were interesting. Some friends gave me a new spot to work out of while I rebuilt the studio (it's nearly done). The space I was provided had some existing woodwork and metalwork tools that I put to use.

As we rebuilt the lost buildings on our ranch, I started helping with the construction of our barn. I learned a lot about general construction and woodwork. And had some space to work on big projects. I was playing with my son one day around the construction site, rolling a ball over some large stacks of long boards, and the idea of the game, congealed. I had an idea of the course, the field of play, and how I could make it interesting.

I've always loved games, especially bar games, like pool, darts, and shuffleboard, but others as well. Skeeball, bocce, golf, mini golf. Games that involve skill, and have a certain harmony to them. My favorite part of golf is around the greens. Watching the ball roll over mounds and find the right path to the hole. I think making a putt is exciting, but the drama comes from how the ball arrives at the hole. And that quest to find the drama in scoring led to the idea that it is the course that makes the game interesting. I wanted my game to have a unique path, but I wanted it to be changeable so that it would keep my interest. That's how I ended up creating the TerraForms. The pieces that sit on the table and make for obstacles and possibilities. (The first Terraforms were created with those initial cuts of redwood. Now they've been further developed using stacks of Baltic Birch plywood, which allows me to design the shapes in any number of styles.) To make points, you can't go in a straight line, you have to find a path that works. And there is more than one path to take.

That's the idea of TerraBall in a nutshell. Choosing your own path.