Today’s Developer Links include some tips on game design, on how to make programmers more productive, and on how to talk about your game (and how talking about it may actually help figure out the design).

Six Ideas Rejected From Octodad: Dadliest Catch (Octodad Blog)
“We’ve been in development of Octodad: Dadliest Catch for a while now, and while we make cephalopod fatherhood simulation look easy, it’s been a tumultuous process! A lot of work has gone into the content we’ve shown at PAX and on Greenlight. But I’d like to take a moment to consider content that hasn’t been shown. Moreover, the content that will never be shown.”

iPad Victory Shot (The Witness)
“For the past few weeks Andy has been working on the iPad port of the game, and we now have the engine running on that device… The colors are all funny because we haven’t written the shaders for the iPad yet, so what you are seeing is the surface normals of the objects in the scene.”

Inside The Team: t – 12 Days (Unknown Worlds)
“The clock is ticking, the days are running down. It is difficult to believe that in 12 days Natural Selection 2 will be released. But then again, maybe it isn’t. After all, there have been over 370,000 games of NS2 played so far. If you search YouTube for ‘Natural Selection 2′ there are loads of gameplay videos, previews, and general shenanigans.”

Talking About Convo (Radiator)
“Figuring out how to talk about your game is part of designing your game — so trying to explain Convo to various people has been extremely helpful in refining my design goals. My favorite version so far has been, ‘it’s an attempt to make The Sims accessible for hardcore gamers.’”

Indie Tips #1: Designing Your Games (Independent Gaming)
“Hello! I’m Michael Roe, the newest writer at IndependentGaming. Every week I’ll be writing an article for indie game developers, just offering advice gathered from my 8 years of experience making games. So today, I’ll be starting off with some tips on designing your new game.”

Fix Your Pebbles (AltDevBlogADay)
“Good programming stories don’t quite grow on trees, but it’s quite fun to take random bits of advice and make them apply to technology. One of my favorite witty aphorisms came from – if you can believe it – an inspirational saying on a tabletop.”

New Weekly Column: Zeboyd Games Art! (Zeboyd Games)
“You may have heard that we’re trying to keep Zeboyd.com updated far more regularly going forward.  Well, it’s true!  And so we are starting a brand new weekly column dedicated to art.  Artwork by myself (Bill Stiernberg) for our games and others, as well as artwork by you, the fans.”

Island Snapshot Two-For-One (The Witness)
(There was no text in this post, so you’re just going to have to go see the pictures.)

You may be interested in:

1. 

   Dev Links: Pumpkin Pixels
2. 

   Dev Links: Multiplatform
3. 

   Dev Links: Shields Up
4. 

   Dev Links: Tunnel Vision
5. 

   Dev Links: Skins