Author: Derek and Lucy White
Located in: Urbandale, Iowa
Submitted: July 25, 2020
Tell us a little about yourself. After receiving his PhD in Finance from the University of Texas at Austin, Derek moved to Sydney, Australia to teach at the University of New South Wales. While in Sydney, he met and married Lucy who is originally from Jakarta, Indonesia. A little over a year after their marriage, they moved to Des Moines, Iowa where they have built their family and their life.
What was your motivation behind this project? In April 2018, Derek had been teaching both his kids in Sunday morning class when he asked his fateful question. While pulling out of the church parking lot after Sunday service, he asked, "did you like my class?"
In unison, "not really".
"Why?"
"Because you talk too much."
The topic for the series was "The Decisions We Make" and the subject for the following week was, "The Friends We Make". Realizing he needed a fresh approach, Derek spent the week searching and thinking. On Saturday morning, in the space between a dream and waking up, the idea for True Frenemies popped.
What do you hope folks will gain from this project? Our mission with True Frenemies is To Unify and Entertain. We believe in the story of the good Samaritan. We believe in forgiveness. We believe in faith, hope, and love and especially the greatest of these. We can fixate on what divides or we can focus on what brings us together.
True Frenemies exists to bring people together and genuinely demonstrate what it really means to turn the other cheek seventy times seven. In True Frenemies you will need to help another player reach the Tree of Life. The catch? You will not necessarily know who is trying to help you. The person you need to assist may not only resist, but also actually undermine you every step of the way. But you must continue to help that person anyway.
How were you personally impacted by working on this project? We had never made a game before, nor launched anything personally on this scale. From concept to completion, this project has consumed the past two years. We have literally done everything we can to create an enjoyable as well as beautiful Christian game.
Who are your influences, sources of inspiration or favorite authors / artists? Like several "roll and move" games, True Frenemies has a path to follow. The path in True Frenemies, however, is a literal work of art with an obvious spiritual metaphor. It is the actions as well as the strategies along this path that sets True Frenemies apart. As far as we are aware, our win condition is entirely unique.
The concept for our win condition - helping another reach the Tree of Life who not only may not appreciate or want the help, but also actively undermine you - can be traced to many situations we have seen firsthand.
Derek grew up participating in Bible Bowls and wanted to find a new construct to cover the same material. True Frenemies provides this construct through its Bible Says cards which are "plug and play", allowing others to make their own cards on any topic to use instead. Perhaps the most popular element of the game - the Face the Music cards - are directly inspired by Uno Dare. Of course, those who play will quickly realize that the primary inspiration for True Frenemies is literally the Bible.
Anything else you'd like readers / listeners to know: Over 65 percent of the United States self identify as Christian (over 200 million people). In spite of this, anyone who walks into a big box retailer looking for a Christian board game will be hard pressed to find anything at all. In our view, this is absolutely stunning. From the beginning, our primary objective has been to create the highest quality game possible with the condition that it must be fun and original. We were fortunate to have as part of our team a graphic designer with over two decades experience with national publications as well as a very talented digital artist who devoted over nine months to design our game board.
