- When writing the prototype for the original game, SHibata wanted to include two main ideas. Firstly, he wanted the game to be set in traditional Japanese houses, as he intented to use the numerous dark, hidden places these buildings usually contain to waken profound fears within the player. Secondly, he wanted to include ghosts, as well as a unique system to confine them via a camera. Why a camera ? Well, he explains that the ghosts are supposed to be so scary to look at directly, that he thought a ghost-trapping camera would be a good way to allow the character to fight the ghost without actually looking at him directly [basically, by putting a camera lens between the apparition and the character].
-Kikuchi was opposed to the camera idea at first. His vision of the way a character should fight a ghost in a Japanese-style horror story was a bit more "ceremonial" and involved something like the character shooting an exorcising arrow as well as casting some charm on the ghost to defeat it. However, he later found out that this camera idea was quite fitting for this project, and ended up approving it.

- This new game takes place on the fictional Rougetsutou island, within a half-western half-Japanese hotel, which served as a sanatorium in the past. On this island, a mystical ritual was performed every ten years by the autochthons as a Moon worshipping ceremonial, until the rituals stopped one day for mysterious reasons.
Coincidentally to this, five youngs girls were abducted on the island, and later retrieved to safety by a detective. However, since the 5 victims had lost all memories related to these events, the case was closed.
The story of the game actually begins several years later, when the each of the 3 remaining victims choose to go back to the island to try to remember what happened to them many years ago. These 3 young women are the main characters of the game.

- Move the character with the nunchuk, direct the flashlight with the remote. Seems like it doesn't use a pointer at all, just the motion sensors, so you just have to move/incline the Wiimote up, down, right, or left to control the flashlight. After multiple experiments, they found out that this is the control scheme that better replicates the sensation of holding an actual flashlight. Works pretty well apparently.

-About the stage design -> while the previous games in the series were taking place mainly in old traditional Japanese houses, this new game takes place in a mansion that blends Japanese style as well as Western style. The reason for this ? It's that while the traditional, Japanese livehood was usually just above the ground (and below the usual line-of-sight), the western-influenced livehood tends to place everyday objects higher from the ground )and closer to the line-of-sight), which they found out was a more practical level design for a 3rd person, behind-the-back game (basically, so the character shouldn't have to constantly look towards the ground to advance and explore...) , which is why they choosed to design the main level of the game around a type of building that is sporting this Western-influence.

- The theme of this project was "Feeling the fear with your body". They effectively endeavoured to use the intuitiveness of the controls in many ways to allow for more immersion. They also made use of features such as the Wiimote speaker, or the vibrations to enforce the immersion.