Keisuke Kikuchi, producer and chief mind behind the Fatal Frame series of Japanese-style horror adventures, is back with a new project. Titled Shinrei Camera, the game — a co-production involving both Nintendo and Kikuchi’s studio at Tecmo — will use the Nintendo 3DS’s augmented-reality abilities to enhance the horror experience.
The 3DS title will come backed with an “AR notebook,” a book which seems normal and harmless enough to the naked eye. Point your 3DS’s camera at it in-game, though, and it’ll reveal all sorts of things lurking in the pages — hidden messages, clues to your past, even a hungry demon or two.
“I wasn’t all that interested in AR to start with,” Kikuchi told Famitsu magazine in this week’s issue, “but as I explored the possibilities, I really started to get into it. I thought we could really do something with it if we combined our traditional strengths in horror and adventure with the AR technology. It was a big challenge, but we went through with it, and the result is this style of horror that does away with the boundaries between the natural and the supernatural.”
