Today's collection of independent game links include an article that highlights the differences between working on an independent project and doing mainstream game development, the announcement of a new Casual Gameplay competition theme that will delight IF authors, and Flixel game templates for a couple of classic shooters served by Canabalt creator Adam Saltsman.

Here goes:

Hardy Dev: Visually Directing the Player
"In some of the play-tests I've had, I would run into a recurrent problem about the player's visual direction. I want the player to go a certain way, open a certain door, or go down a certain ramp, but what's the obvious direction for me is not the obvious direction for the player."

GameCareerGuide: Differences Between Indie/Student Development and Professional Game Development
"Many talented students and hobbyists become professional game developers only to be surprised that the job wasn't exactly what they thought it was. These are examples of the kind of culture shock that new entrants to the games industry can experience." (source: Dev.Mag)

Indiebird: Marketing is more important than quality
"The sad truth is that for most games spending one hour on implementing more features or polishing the game quickly becomes sub-optimal when compared to spending an hour on talking about your game."

JayIsGames: Casual Gameplay Design Competition no. 7
IF authors invited to craft one-room games incorporating the theme 'escape'.

British Indie: Get in the game – over
Some advice on preparing for a pitch or presentation.

Eversion HD - official game website
"For the real fans of Eversion, a high-definition version of the game (640x480 only though) is now available." Works on Windows and Wine.

AdamAtomic's Flx-Invaders at master - GitHub
Simple Flixel games inspired by the classic arcade shooters. (FlxTeroids)