ENCRYPTION is a cinematic first-person psychological horror adventure that blends exploration, puzzle-solving and stealth. You are Leonardo, and your daughter Arianna is missing. As wildfires burn, your search for her leads to the town of Matera, one of the oldest inhabited places on Earth, then continues deep below.

Search streets once crowded with people and tourists, now deserted as the fire closes in. Piece together forgotten papers and words on damaged recordings: more than one story is waiting to be uncovered, and every one leads back to Arianna. Only Sofia, your ex-wife, still answers your calls. Everything unfolds through cinematic sequences and fully voiced dialogue.

Shadowy figures move through these spaces, and they hunt you by the sound you make. Just a careless step through water, or a lever thrown, and they’ll know exactly where you are. Silence is usually your best ally, unless you find a way to face them... when you can. But they are not the only threat: with wildfires this close, even the air is not always breathable. There are many ways to die here.

Explore the abandoned city, the land burning around it, and the hollows that run beneath them both. Locations are based on real places, on the architecture and landscape of Matera and southern Italy, and brought to the game through our own 3D laser scanning and photogrammetry technology. Look closely at what the environment hides: its puzzles are rooted in ancient mysteries, or in ordinary things.

Your smartwatch does more than keep track of what you are carrying, the documents you have read and what you are meant to do next. It also monitors your heart rate, your blood oxygen, your step count, and battery life. You carry a flashlight to cut through the dark, a noise detector to help keep silent, and a strange artifact you do not understand yet. Along the way, find every collectible to unlock New Game+: a harder second run, and your only way to decode the whole truth.