Silent Hill: Book of Memories is a 2012 video game developed by and published by . Released for the , it is a of the video game series. It features a who receives the titular book on their birthday, which contains their entire life story, and makes changes to it with unforeseen and often unfavorable consequences. Book of Memories features gameplay elements from : as the player character traverses the dungeons and defeats monsters there, they gain and thus improve their respective abilities. The character progresses from each themed by collecting pieces of a puzzle and then solving the puzzle. Five endings are available based on the character's ; the sixth is a joke ending in the tradition of previous Silent Hill games.
The objective of Silent Hill: Book of Memories is to guide the from an through . The player can choose from five (, , , , and rocker) for his or her player character, which can be customized to a degree. The player character receives for defeating the various monsters; after enough experience points are obtained, the character , allowing the player to improve the character's ("strength, dexterity, agility, intelligence, mind, and vitality"). Each type of character prefers certain statistics; for example, a jock will have greater strength and dexterity than the other types. Items to improve the character's statistics can be equipped.
The goal of each area (called zones) is to collect the required amount of puzzle pieces to solve that area's puzzle and then proceed to the next zone. Each zone contains a and a shop run by a non-player character, where the character may purchase items with memory residue, the in-game currency. At the beginning of each zone, another non-player character, Valtiel, offers the player character an optional . Puzzle pieces can be found in rooms with challenge orbs; breaking the orb results in the appearance of monsters, all of whom must be defeated to obtain the puzzle piece. Various traps can be present in the rooms. Certain rooms called Forsaken Rooms contain a ghost; the player's actions towards it result in a positive, negative, or neutral outcome, which, in turn, affects the ending of the game.
