Digital Lighthouse Games has announced Encryption, a cinematic first-person psychological horror adventure planned for PC in 2027. The newly revealed game is the debut project from the Italian studio and places its central mystery in Matera, a historic southern Italian city recreated through a combination of laser scanning, photogrammetry, Unreal Engine production, and motion-capture performance.
Encryption follows Leonardo, a father searching for his missing daughter, Arianna, while wildfires spread across southern Italy. His journey eventually brings him to Matera, where the visible city appears abandoned. The apparent emptiness does not last: beneath its deserted streets, Leonardo finds ancient spaces and the unnerving sense that something else is moving in the dark.
The premise positions Encryption as a horror game focused less on direct confrontation than vulnerability, investigation, and the pressure of moving carefully through hostile territory. Its developers describe a mix of exploration, environmental puzzles, stealth, and survival, all framed by a story involving supernatural forces, grief, devastation, and a concealed truth at the center of Leonardo's search.
A father's search in a city above and below ground
Leonardo's hunt for Arianna supplies the emotional foundation for Encryption. Rather than presenting Matera purely as an exotic horror backdrop, the game's setup links the city to a personal crisis unfolding against the wider disaster of wildfires. The combination of a missing child, an evacuated or abandoned urban setting, and escalating signs of the supernatural gives the story several layers of uncertainty from the outset.
For useful background on this topic, read K/DA's Louis Vuitton Art Book Arrives as 'Start a Fire' Comeback Nears.
Matera is especially suited to that approach. Its ancient built environment and underground spaces offer a natural contrast between open, sunlit streets and confined subterranean passages. Encryption intends to make that divide central to its atmosphere. Players will begin with an apparently vacant city above ground, then descend into spaces where Leonardo is clearly no longer alone.
That descent suggests a structure in which the setting itself becomes part of the mystery. The deeper Leonardo travels, the more the search for Arianna can intersect with the area's hidden history and the game's ancient riddles. Digital Lighthouse Games has not detailed the full nature of the threat or the dark truth Leonardo will uncover, leaving its larger narrative revelations deliberately under wraps.
Still, the studio has made clear that psychological horror is at the heart of the project. The danger is not simply a matter of monsters in corridors. Encryption is built around loss and destruction as themes, with supernatural elements intended to intensify the uncertainty surrounding Leonardo's situation and his daughter's disappearance.
Stealth, sound and survival over combat
Encryption's enemies are described as shadow entities that are attracted to sound. That detail gives noise an obvious tactical role. Players may need to think about how they move, what they disturb, and whether an action is worth the risk of alerting something nearby. In horror games, sound-sensitive opponents can turn everyday navigation into a tense decision, especially when safe routes are unclear and an objective requires interaction with the environment.
The team is emphasizing intelligence rather than force when dealing with danger. Leonardo will not be positioned as a character who can simply overpower every threat in his path. Instead, surviving encounters is expected to rely on stealth, awareness, and problem-solving. That approach fits the protagonist's role: he is an ordinary father in an extraordinary and escalating nightmare, rather than an action specialist equipped to clear each area through combat.
Exploration and puzzles will also be key parts of progress. The game's puzzle design is said to draw from ancient mysteries and close observation of the environment. This could make the city's architecture, artifacts, pathways, and visual details meaningful beyond their role in establishing mood. A well-used environmental puzzle system can give players reason to study each location carefully, while also reinforcing the sense that Matera holds information Leonardo needs but cannot immediately understand.
The balance between stealth and investigation will likely be crucial to Encryption's pacing. Horror titles often gain tension from alternating between quieter stretches of discovery and moments when a threat disrupts that concentration. With enemies that respond to sound, even a puzzle sequence could become dangerous if players are forced to act while trying not to reveal their position.
Building Matera through extensive location capture
One of Encryption's most notable ambitions is its attempt to ground its horror in real places. Digital Lighthouse Games has used terrestrial and aerial 3D laser scanning along with photogrammetry to build its interpretation of Matera and the surrounding region of southern Italy. The production also uses cinematic lighting, Unreal Engine environments, and motion-capture animation.
Those methods are not merely technical bullet points in a game built around a specific real-world setting. Matera's identity, both above and below ground, is fundamental to Encryption's premise. A detailed recreation can make the horror more immediate by giving it recognizable material texture: stone surfaces, narrow routes, aged structures, open streets emptied by crisis, and subterranean areas that feel shaped by history rather than designed solely as conventional game levels.
Laser scanning and photogrammetry can help preserve the irregularity of real locations. That matters in a psychological horror experience, where believable spaces can make strange events feel more disruptive. Players may be more willing to accept the setting as a tangible place before the game asks them to question what is happening within it.
The use of cinematic lighting should be similarly important. Encryption's core concept depends on the transition from an empty-looking city to threatening depths. Light, darkness, fire-lit skies, shadows, and restricted visibility can all serve the game's storytelling as well as its stealth mechanics. Since the hostile entities are explicitly associated with shadow, the visual relationship between illumination and danger may be a defining part of the experience, though the studio has not yet outlined exactly how those systems will work in play.
A debut project with a cinematic focus
Encryption is Digital Lighthouse Games' first title, and the announcement presents it as a narrative-led production with fully voiced dialogue and cinematic sequences. That combination indicates that Leonardo's perspective and emotional stakes will be carried not only through player exploration but also through authored story scenes and performances.
"Encryption is a rich psychological horror, with themes of the supernatural, loss and destruction that unravel to reveal a dark hidden truth," said Adriano Bizzoco, Head of Studio at Digital Lighthouse Games.
For a debut game, the project's scope is notable: a real-world Italian setting recreated with high-detail capture techniques, a story centered on family loss, and gameplay systems meant to create tension without leaning on brute-force solutions. Its success will depend on how well those pieces connect. Atmospheric environments alone are not enough for psychological horror, but the premise gives the team a strong framework for intertwining narrative stakes with the act of navigating an increasingly unsafe place.
The father-and-daughter story also has the potential to distinguish Encryption from horror games built around more detached protagonists. Leonardo is not entering Matera simply to investigate an unexplained event; every discovery is tied to a deeply personal objective. If the game maintains that connection throughout its puzzles and stealth sequences, each descent into the city's hidden spaces could feel like a step toward both an answer and a greater emotional cost.
Encryption release window and platform
Encryption is currently scheduled to arrive on PC in 2027. No more specific launch date has been announced, and Digital Lighthouse Games has not confirmed versions for consoles, handheld devices, or other platforms. The game is available to wishlist on Steam.
More details about the world, its mysteries, and its particular survival systems are expected to arrive closer to release. For now, Encryption stands out through its setting and its stated commitment to atmospheric, story-driven horror: a journey through a wildfire-stricken southern Italy, into a deserted Matera, and then far below it, where silence may be the difference between finding Arianna and being found first.
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