Koei Tecmo has announced that Project Zero: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse – known as Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse in North America – will release on Nintendo Switch early next year.
This has seen the developer look to revive and remaster the classic Japanese horror adventure, which was released exclusively for Wii in Japan back in 2008. Since becoming “one of Koei Tecmo’s most requested remasters for over a decade,” it is now destined for the portable home console.
The game is set a decade after five girls mysteriously disappeared at a festival on Rōgetsu Isle, an island situated in southern Japan. While they were eventually rescued, their memories were lost, only faintly remembering “a single melody and a seemingly possessed masked woman dancing in the moonlight.”
Still unable to remember the events surrounding their disappearance, two of the five girls have since died and were discovered with their faces covered and placed in a tragic, crying pose. The three girls that remain choose to return to the eerie island with the hope of solving the mystery behind their friends’ deaths and the memories that they left behind.
Relying on the moonlight and a faint flashlight to search for clues, the story progresses as you discover relics – such as old newspaper articles and notes – that will allow the girls to unravel the secrets about the island’s past.
The girls will be confronted by vengeful spirits as they explore, coming to rely on the Camera Obscura to repel them – sealing away their power by photographing them. You will need to equip stronger lenses and use different films to capture the more powerful spirits, using the camera to capture “things that cannot be seen” to help recover the evidence needed to remember the girls’ haunting past.
The remastered game has an all-new Photo Mode, new and altered costumes, enhanced graphics – such as improved rendering of shadows and light – with the in-game movies and character models “brushed-up to deliver a story that shines, both narratively and aesthetically as the three remaining girls attempt to rediscover their past before becoming victims once again.”
Project Zero: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse will release digitally on the Nintendo eShop for Nintendo Switch worldwide in early 2023.
