Flight 813 Is Down is an interactive story about trauma, stress, and how human beings react in times of crisis. You are a paramedic, and the first person on site to a remote plane crash. You only have a limited time to rescue survivors, and you must make difficult choices along the way.
Winner of the 2026 Indie Mountain West Changemakers Award!
Genre: Interactive Fiction
Role: Game Designer, Narrative Designer, 2D Artist, Marketer, Playtester
Completion Date: Demo completed in July 2026; full game in active development
Team Size: 1 person
Platform: PC (Itch)
Software Used: Ink, Scrivener
My Contributions:
-
-Designed the main plot, characters, and story beats to give the player a feeling of urgency, danger, and consequences.
-
-Implemented text into Ink to allow for branching dialogue and save variables to remember player actions.
-
-Researched medical techniques and EMS witness accounts to allow for realism.
-
-Designed marketing assets, including the demo trailer and itch banners and thumbnails.
Player Personalities
Problem:
In order to maintain interactivity, I needed to give the player multiple ways of responding to questions and conversations without breaking the illusion of being an experienced paramedic.
Solution:
-
Based on past narrative experience, I knew that most players preferred around three options to choose from in most situations.
-
I designed three specific personality archetypes to represent the different "flavors" of paramedic, which I nicknamed "Ego", "Superego" and "Id".
-
The Ego is the kind, empathetic nurse who wants to keep patients calm.
-
The Superego is the logical, experienced doctor who cares about minimizing injury.
-
The Id is the sarcastic, jaded EMS professional who wants to get the job done as quickly as possible.
-
-
Each choice would feature at least 3 options, with at least one of each option associated with each personality. This way, players could roleplay as their favorite personality, or strategically choose what to say based on the situation.
Lessons:
-
On the whole, players enjoyed the different personalities for giving them more methods to roleplay as their character while interacting with the game world.
-
Some players provided feedback that some of the Id's dialogue options, especially their gallows humor, often felt out-of-place and strange compared to the other two personalities. Based on that feedback, I rewrote the Id's choices to focus more on irritation and impatience, while still doing their job regardless, to make them more heroic.
Examples of the personality choices in action. Note the consistent framing: the Superego option is on the top, then the Ego, then the Id on the bottom. This keeps players from getting confused over what choice fits with what personality.
My initial designs for the main personalities, including a quotation at the top summing up their dialogue and beliefs.
Wreckage Exploration and Immersion
Problem:
After funneling the player forwards in the prologue, I wanted to give the player time to soak in the setpiece of the plane crash, while also giving them the sensation of awkwardly exploring the unknown wreckage.
Solution:
-
I decided to prevent the player from progressing forwards until they completed two main goals: investigating the plane's missing tail, and setting up a staging area in a clearing.
-
I included a "Continue" button that would constantly remind the player of the goals they would need to complete to progress, giving them clear milestones to work towards while still requiring them to do their own investigation.
-
In the case of the missing tail, which was buried amongst six other menu choices, I left multiple clues to highlight its importance. I renamed the choice "Something's off about the tail" and also drew attention to it from the "Move closer to the plane" choice.
Lessons:
-
Players as a whole were fully immersed in the plane wreckage sequence. For the most part, players were able to figure out how to progress onwards.
-
My progression hints were effective in helping players move forwards, especially the hint in "Move closer to the plane", which most players chose first.
-
Some players got overwhelmed by the size of the menus and kept going in circles despite having the information they needed. Based on that feedback, I updated the sequence so most of the flavor choices would disappear after being selected for the first time. This greatly cleared up the menus and made it more obvious for players what options they had not yet explored.
My initial blockout for the wreckage investigation sequence, as well as the following sequence where the player encounters their first patient.
The plane investigation menu, shortly after selecting the "Move closer to the plane" option. The description text naturally draws the player to check the tail by hinting at something strange about it.