In each scenario, the characters involved in the present investigation use Camera Obscura, objects created by Dr. Kunihiko Asou that can capture and pacify spirits.

[3][15][16] The fifth title, Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water,[f] was released for the Wii U in 2014 in Japan and 2015 in North America, Europe and Australia.

[27] A manga based on the series written by Shin Kibayashi, Fatal Frame: Shadow Priestess,[h] was released in both Japanese and English through DeNA's website in July 2014.

The novel it was based on, Fatal Frame: A Curse Affecting Only Girls by Eiji Ohtsuka, was released a few months prior to the movie.

[37] Later that year, Steven Spielberg was helping Rogers to polish the game's script, and that sessions to find a director and cast the movie would follow.

[35] Christophe Gans said in an interview that the movie will take place in Japan in an attempt to capture its Japanese haunted house setting.

[40][41] While navigating these environments, the main character's only means of defense is the Camera Obscura, which can be used to damage ghosts, capturing them on film and pacifying them.

A ghost's captured spirit energy is converted into points, which can be used to buy items to upgrade the Camera Obscura and obtain more powerful film.

For Mask of the Lunar Eclipse and later entries, the camera perspective was altered to a third-person over-the-shoulder view and character movement was increased a little to speed up gameplay.

The main unifying factor is navigating through haunted locations struck by a supernatural catastrophe, with a recurring setting being abandoned Japanese mansions.

[45] Another recurring concept is a pseudo-physical location bridging the physical and spiritual worlds, inspired by a tanka written by Japanese poet Taeko Kuzuhara: these were represented by the Hellish Abyss in Crimson Butterfly and the lake in Maiden of Black Water.

The story revolves around three girls who travel back to the fictional Rougetsu Island to recover memories of being kidnapped while they lived there ten years before.

It takes place around the fictional Mount Hikami, a site infamous for suicides and rituals associated with local bodies of water.

Inspired by his own experiences of supernatural events, and heartened by the success of the Silent Hill series, Shibata and Keisuke Kikuchi set to work on creating the basics for the game.

[4][49][50] The Camera Obscura was not in the initial discussions between Shibata and Kikuchi, with the original idea being that ghosts would be avoided and repelled by light.

[51] For Crimson Butterfly, the team toned down the frightening aspects so players would be willing to complete a playthrough, alongside creating a stronger story.

As they wanted to bring more people into the series, they included a stronger narrative and new gameplay elements to make the experience easier for newcomers.

[47][55] Since Crimson Butterfly, theme songs have been created for each title, primarily performed by Japanese singer Tsuki Amano.

The development team wanted an image song for Crimson Butterfly, and Shibata found the then-newly debuted Amano in the Japanese independent community.

IGN's Clara Barraza, in an article on the evolution of the survival horror genre, said that the first game "broke away from the use of weapons like guns and planks of wood to switch it up and try something completely different", praising the use of the Camera Obscura in evoking a sense of fear and calling the game "[a] unique spin on the genre".

[77] In a different article for IGN on the history of survival horror, editor Travis Fahs stated that the series gave a much-needed boost to the genre during a period of decline in the early 2000s, highlighting the Japanese horror aesthetic as a selling point that attracted players in tandem with the popularity of The Ring.

[45] Similarly, as part of a review of Maiden of Black Water, Dennis Scimeca of The Daily Dot ranked the Fatal Frame series alongside Resident Evil and Silent Hill.

[79] In an article on the series, Kotaku writer Richard Eisenbeis said that Fatal Frame succeeded in drawing his attention when most other horror games did not, generally praising the settings and the "master stroke" of the Camera Obscura in gameplay.