Epic Games’ new store is not only taking the fight to Steam by giving developers a bigger cut of their games’ earnings—it’s locking down exclusive games, too.

I’m a voracious Souls player. From multiple playthroughs of the Dark Souls trilogy to games like The Surge and Nioh, I can’t get enough of moody exploration and tough boss fights.

Ashen, a new Souls-like published by Annapurna Interactive, released last week on the Epic store and Xbox One, and while it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, its small refinements have made for a memorable journey thus far.

This was the first E3 I've attended IRL, and I spent most of it interviewing producers of games like Splatoon 2, Jump Force and SoulCalibur 6.

Between learning tidbits about whether Splatoon 2's squid kids eat squid and why SoulCalibur 6's women still look like pin-ups, I managed to play a few upcoming games that I'm really, really excited about.

Ashen, a beautiful survival game we first wrote about in 2014, is finally nearing the finish line. It was at Microsoft's E3 presser earlier today, and will be out later this year. Here's a trailer.

Ashen sure looks pretty. And Ico-inspiried. It's "an action RPG about a wanderer in search of a place to call home." Also the world has no sun. Bummer. Damn, though, that art. It's coming to Xbox One and PC.

Ashen is an indie survivial RPG that we first showed off a few weeks ago. It's got some interesting ideas on stuff like passive multiplayer, but what really struck me was how striking the game's visuals were. So I got in touch with the devs so I could share more of the game's art.