iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

When you can make something in 2-3 hours - like a book - you get to find out how you screwed up very fast. The turnaround is so fast it makes it easy to learn and fix things the next go around. Anyway, prototype your games.

Inside end papers of my newest book. They're distorted from a large amount of glue used on the support bands.

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

However my attempt at hand trimming the top and tail was a disaster. :-( The glue around the support bands warped the end papers too. And the interfacing paper around the hinges makes a crinkly sound!

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

The canvas looks good, and the interfacing stopped any glue leaking through well!

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Gluing up the spine. A bit of cloth for reinforcement.

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Experiments in making book cloth with paper based iron-on interfacing. Starting to know my way around the local haberdashery. 😌

Three colours of folded cotton canvas on my shelves. Dark blue. A kind of cyan, and a very light cyan.

Front of the book cloth. Bit bubbly. Prob used too much heat and motion. Still, promising!

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

And a super chunky one. Gonna give it a nice curved spine.

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I just realised that my micro-studio Boot Disk Games is now over two years old (2 years, 3 months). That's how long I've now been doing gamedev full time. 🤯 I hope one day I'm in a position to grow it just a little more. But for now I'm just happy to still be doing what I'm doing.

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I saw this post on reddit and I have thoughts...

A person I was speaking to recently is extremely oblivious to the world of games in general. I have been talking to him about the beautiful stories done games tell and the important messages they can carry.

Please give me the names of some more games I can talk to him about. I really want to show that games can be a really positive influence.

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Today I think I resolved the final few major issues with the overall Innkeep plot that I started on nearly 4 years ago. Journaling over the past few months helped get most of the pieces in view. Then eventually my subconscious spat it out.

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

OK, here's mine. First row = formative Second row = time well spent Third row = creative inspirations

First row: Ultima 7 the Black Gate, Morrowind, Deus Ex
Second row: Project Zomboid, The Long Dark, Stationeers
Third row: Pathologic 2, Sunless Sea, The Seance of Blake Manor

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Behind every shipped game is this, right?

Homer with all his fat clamped behind him.

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Speaking of mushrooms. Heres a 1988 childrens book I found today.

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Pretty rough in places but I think im getting there.

Bottom view of the book spine as it opens. We see the spine lift slightly.

Top view of spine. Paper is very roughly cut but otherwise looks neat.

Inside card. Bit bumpy. Needs extra paper underneath to level out cover cloth edges.

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Weekend book binding. Something a little larger. Got the hinges working properly.

Book from above. The paper is a bit rough as my trimmer was blunt.

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Visually I think about the Japanese-European artistic dialogue a bit like this too. Each learning from each other. The europeans learning a certain restraint, a way of capturing the inner spirit of a thing. The Japanese learning certain modern techniques with which to re-approach traditional styles.

Alfons Mucha - F. Champenois Imprimeur-Éditeur. A lady in a flowing silk dress, holding a colourful book in her lap. Surrounded by a floral pattern in a circle behind her. Thick lines highlight the borders of the character.

Kuroki Neko (黒き猫, Black Cat) by Hishida Shunsō, 1910. This is a trimmed down version, as it's very long. We see the black cat, perched on a trunk. Here, we distinctive black lines are gone though. Instead we see brush work that highlights how the fur of the cat isn't quite ever 'starting' or 'ending'. I've seen a talk once that just considers this from a philosophical perspective. Very interesting piece.

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Yes I may have cosplayed as an innkeeper for my grant application video.

Me dressed as the innkeeper from our game. I'm posing by the background of our box art showing the interior of the inn, holding a tankard.

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

"You know what it is? I just don't think about it."

A still from the film Children of Men. In this scene, our protagonist (Theo) meets and old friend who has a job in government. Theo asks how the friend keeps functioning. Doing what he does while knowing that nobody will even be around to see it in the future. To which the friend replies: "You know what it is? I just don't think about it."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJO0n6kvPRU

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Do you like #gamedev blog posts? I put one out every few months! Maybe sign up to our mailing list so you'll never miss them. innkeepgame.com p.s. 📜📜📜The next one is this Wednesday! 📜📜📜

A digital drawing of an open book, with text scrawled across it. Above it is the text: Read the development blog.

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Started reading some Lin Yutang on the weekend. Very quotable. He characterised his favourite Chinese philosophers as "dreaming with one eye open", yet seeing "with one eye closed": a healthy life is one that stays somewhere liminal between dreaming and waking, imagination and practicality.

A photograph in black and white of Lin Yutang

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Alright. Another week. Let's tinker with our projects.

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Pretty happy with the real end band. Messy but it worked!

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Used some interfacing to back the cloth. Can buy it cheap by the meter at a local shop. Didn't really leave enough width for pasting to the board (corners esp). But bone folder came to the rescue. Spine is a bit of thin card from a box of cornflakes!

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Pretty clearly progressed when seen alongside the first attempt.

Side by side comparison with the first attempt. View from above. The new book is looking a lot neater.

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Weekend binding session. (New) mistakes were made. But a big improvement overall!

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Hewwoo everyone! Salutations! *strums lute*

A strange bit of marginalia. A bard is playing a lute. But they are some kind of centaur. Yet also, their bottom is a face?? From:

https://weirdmedievalguys.substack.com/p/how-to-interpret-medieval-marginalia

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Then Ultima 7 considers the potential evil of religious movements. In U5 the state forced the virtues upon people. Yet in U7 people join 'the fellowship' willingly, seeking solace and community in difficult times. It's more poking at the gifting mega-church than examining theocracy.

A still from Ultima 7 (my own gameplay screenshot). We no longer have a tile based system, but a more dynamic and flexible world of "chunks" (v. large tiles), over which we have place walls and characters more granularly. Gorgeous, but with the legacy of tiles giving it still an odd perspective. True isometric would come with Ultima 8.

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

In Ultima 6, it's the Avatar's turn for scrutiny. Could this "paragon of virtue" be someone else's villain? Could their past actions have had unintended consequences that have harmed people? This title also considers heavy subjects like xenophobia and genocide.

From the wiki. A still frame taken from the DOSBox window of ChildOfTheMoon83's game play. We are still in the world of tiles, although it is no longer an "overworld" here. The detailing for this approach has reached its peak.

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Ultima 5 then goes a step further, and questions the virtues themselves: What if they were turned into absolutes and wielded against people by those in power? What if someone -forced- you to be 'virtuous'?

A screenshot of Ultima 5 from the wiki. A still frame taken from the DOSBox window of ChildOfTheMoon83's game play. A little more detailed but still a tile based overworld game.

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Ultima 4 asks: What if the player needed to be -virtuous-? This was pretty bold. CRPGs until then were really just about killing monsters in dungeons. I believe Garriot was also responding to the moral panic about D&D at the time.

A screenshot of Ultima 4. A simple overworld is made of tiles. There is a limited color palette.

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Ultima was always pushing what could be done technically. But (from IV) it was always trying to do something new thematically too.

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

They say a stranger is just a friend you haven't met yet. They haven't met Raun.

A screenshot of the guest page in the master's book, a diegetic UI element in the indie game innkeep. We see on the left page a number of portraits in pixel art style, showing different tough looking characters. On the right page we see one of those character's portraits in larger scale. Below are a number of icons (3) in black and white. The cursor is hovering over one of those icons, generating a tool tip. The tool tip states: "Stranger. Some stones are best left unturned."

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Step 1. Steal underpants. Step 2. ???? Step 3. Profit!

A screenshot of the trading window for Innkeep. It's a GUMPS (Ultima 7-8) style diegetic system, where you can drag and drop items. We see two baskets in the centre, with a pair of scales in between them. At the bottom are the portraits of the player and a merchant. In the player's "offer" basket we see a pair of briefs. The merchant is saying: "I'm not going to ask where you got those."

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

My fav example on the 'economic news' / geopolitics side of things is a Mr Sean Foo. Literally every other thumbnail going back years maybe is "JUST HAPPENED" or "JUST GOT UGLY", or some variation.

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Post a picture of you from another era 📷

A much younger me holding a fan, in Japan in the summer time. Still bald though.

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

A little peek at a UI feature that we're testing out at the moment: the ability to directly open a guest's page in your journal (the master's book), removing the need to navigate tabs to find them. The kind of thing that's obviously needed once you add it, but took a while to crystallize.

Still from the game Innkeep. We see a number of pixel art characters in fantasy / medieval clothing, seated around two tables. Nearby stands the player character in an apron. The cursor is in the shape of an open book, and is hovering over one of the seated characters. That character has a white highlight drawn about them, and has their name drawn above in white.

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Back to working with storylets again atm after a while away on other features. Ahhh I love these things. Ahhhhhhh so good. Soo goooood.

Marge holding a potato that says Storylets. A meme still from when she says: "I just think they're neat."

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

A little esoteric curiosity in my library. Living Time. By Maurice Nicoll (1953). Love the Egyptian style illustration on the title page.

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Daniel Burke - 🍺Innkeep @innkeep.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

"A Hand of Glory is the dried and pickled hand of a hanged man, often specified as being the left (Latin: sinister) hand, or, if the person was hanged for murder, the hand that 'did the deed.'" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_of...

"A hand of glory holding a candle, from the 18th century grimoire Petit Albert."

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