Flash skills are increasingly in demand, and there is a shortage of good Flash designers on the market today. Yet, despite the business opportunities, many print designers find the leap to interactive Flash design intimidating.

If that sounds familar, here is a great series of tutorials detailing how to create a simple Flash-based shooter game from scratch. The series was developed by Kongregate.com and includes free downloadable Flash source files for the game “Shoot” shown above. The tutorials walk novices through the fundamentals of using Flash as a game building tool, and explores the elements needed to pull together a simple, interactive shooter game.

While building a simple arcade game might appear a bit frivolous, the Flash skills you’ll pick up along the way are serious business.