Blitz Games bills itself as one of the world's largest independent developers, but instead of touting its own game products at E3 this year, Blitz was promoting a partnership program called Blitz 1UP. As its cup runneth over with talent and experience, Blitz began expanding its business model to include partnerships with smaller indie game developers. We had the chance to preview many of the games that are coming out as a result of this initiative, and were quite impressed. More than the games even, we were impressed by the enthusiasm and confidence that the folks from Blitz display when talking about their efforts to share the wealth with developers looking for a boost.

A few of the games that we saw during our meeting with Blitz:

• Fluttabyes, a casual jewel-matching game where there are butterflies instead of jewels. Nice graphics and a rich design aesthetic were in evidence.
• Clover, an adventure game with what appear to be hand-drawn graphics and a unique style of storytelling.
• Mole Control, a fast-paced game inspired by Minesweeper, but with a 3D bias. Ridding a town of its mole infestation is the premise, and there appeared to be lots of interesting twists to the gameplay.
• Ongaku, a rhythm/action type of game that looks like it will be an easy one to pick up and play. Plus, there is an editor included that lets you record your own levels and attach custom video backgrounds, which we thought was totally fab.
• Project Aftermath, a Real-Time Strategy game that takes a much more serious tone, compared to the more light-hearted fare on display from Blitz. We're always hungry for good RTS gameplay, so this is a welcome addition.

The idea behind Blitz 1UP is to package the things that Blitz has become very good at doing, so that it can support smaller indie developers looking for help in areas like distribution, design and platform guidance, public relations, software development, quality assurance, and localization. Instead of presenting this as one consolidated offering, Blitz 1UP makes things modular, allowing developers to choose what service or services they most need. There are 17 partnerships on the books right now, with 10 actively underway, so it sounds like Blitz 1UP has generated some serious interest in the industry. Looking at the quality of games coming through this program, combined with the great enthusiasm the folks from Blitz displayed when talking about the work they're doing with Blitz 1UP, we look forward to seeing this flourish. And in the classic win-win mindset, we're selfishly motivated by all the interesting games being spun out as a result of Blitz 1UP.