Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir is a survival horror game and a spin-off from the Fatal Frame series. The game utilizes the AR functionality of the 3DS to interact with the provided AR Notebook ("The Diary of Faces" (USA) / "The Purple Diary" (Europe)).

The game starts with the player receiving the above mentioned AR Book, on which the player has a creepy and sinister feeling about the whole aura around the book. Creepy pictures, strange and cryptic words. Blank pages suddenly filling themselves with texts. The game can be generally categorized into three sections:

Story Mode (Diary of Faces/Purple Diary): The main mode, in which the 3DS camera is used as Camera Obscura to find hints within the diary and battle ghosts in the real world environment around them. The main goal is to aid the trapped female ghost Maya in the diary and help her escape her troublesome fate. This mode is split up in sections, which can be accessed from the main menu when unlocked. Clearing Story Mode unlocks an outfit for Maya, Story Mode (Extra), and Battle mode.

Story Mode (Extra): This is a more difficult version of story mode, unlocked after clearing the standard Story Mode.

Battle Mode: This mode after being unlocked is a mode in which the player can freely take photographs of the world around him and battle characters appearing in story mode. Clearing battles in this mode adds a new costume and new battles.

Ghost Camera: This mode can be played in a total of three different ways. Using the 3DS' camera to take photos of the player's surroundings will result in images of ghosts appearing in the pictures. Players can also "diagnose" someone as being haunted, by taking a photo of the player or other people, which will reveal an image of the "ghost" haunting them. Players can also take photographs of their own face or the faces of others and put them onto a ghost's body.

Horror Notebook: In this mode, the player must use the 3DS camera to search through the AR Notebook to find the ghost of the Masked Boy hiding within it, which will trigger a mini-game. The other known game in this mode is "Curse of the Japanese Dolls", in which the player must correctly identify the real doll out of a group, and photograph it to exorcise it within the time limit.