There Are No Ghosts at the Grand is a first-person, narrative-driven mystery game developed by Friday Sundae. This is the studio’s debut game, and a hands-on demo is available for those at Gamescom this week. I watched the demo ahead of its release at a preview event, and the game is an alluring combination of part-ghost story, part-musical, and part-renovation game. The heart of the game is the ghost story, though, and the developer works to make this spooky seaside tale approachable for everyone.
In There Are No Ghosts at the Grand, you play as Chris David, a character who has inherited The Grand, a dilapidated hotel located along the English coast. Chris is initially only tasked with restoration of the hotel, but he is ultimately drawn into rooting out a deeper mystery that surrounds the town and the people who live there.
The first part of the demo showcased the game’s unique hotel renovation mechanics, which uses a quirky set of talking power tools built into one handheld device. Robert C. MacBrushy is a Scottish AI assistant integrated into this tool, and he gives a bit of humorous commentary to keep you company as you renovate the hotel. This sounds like it will come in handy to balance the tense elements of the game, as There Are No Ghosts at the Grand turns spooky at nighttime.
In the daytime, the game focuses on renovation work, with the handheld device hosting a selection of tools, including a sandblaster, power sprayer, turbo vacuum, and a furnisher. Anil Glendinning, Friday Sundae’s creative director and co-founder who presented the demo, also confirmed each power-tool type has three different modes that are unlocked as you progress. We saw debris get sucked up in the device’s turbo vacuum, and the demo also showed how intuitive the sprayer mechanic could be when painting walls. Glendinning said the game was designed to allow players to have fun renovating without requiring precision. With simple swipes of the sprayer, the game knew to paint only the wall surface and ignore the surrounding furniture and paintings that were still decorating the area.
At nighttime, the town gets a bit weird and spooky. A good example of this is when Chris’s efforts to help the mayor leaves him stranded on an island. This seems to be the first moment of the game where he learns about the spooky dangers of the town, as he steps outside during a nighttime portion of the demo to find a bunch of red chairs scattered all around him. The chairs quickly evolved into some sort of spider-chair-monsters. This scare culminated in a chase scene and first-person-shooter moment, where the renovation multi-tool turned into a weapon that let Chris fire back at the creepy chair-monsters.
“We describe the game as being spooky. But there’s no gore in the game or horror-distressing elements,” Glendinning said. “It doesn’t need it in order to tell the story we want to tell. And that story is about people and family, and it’s about how some of that stuff can manifest itself in life.”
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There Are No Ghosts at the Grand is also a musical of sorts. Our preview introduced us to the town’s mayor, who shared her feelings toward Chris and his hotel renovation plans through a musical number. During these scenes, you’re given the option to choose how you want to respond to the characters, and Chris will sing his reply. These musical moments will happen with other characters you meet in the story as well.
The game wasn’t always planned to be a musical, Glendinning said, but the element was added fairly early on.
“From the very start, we wanted to create a ghost story,” he said, explaining how the story was inspired by some of the dilapidated seaside towns and boarded-up shops found in the United Kingdom. “We were hearing this internal soundtrack in our heads as we were creating this ghost story, and as we were writing dialogue and setting it to music, the [musical] dialogue evolved from that.”
These musical interactions are just some of the opportunities for branching narratives in the game. There are also multiple endings you can experience based on your non-musical interactions with the town folk, as well as how much information you learn about the town and your neighbors by exploring and uncovering clues.
There Are No Ghosts at the Grand extends beyond the hotel itself, as you get access to explore various parts of the seaside village. We saw part of a mission that began with a moped ride through town, and eventually, Chris was tasked with repairing a boat for a trip to a haunted island with a World War II bunker.
We weren’t introduced to many characters, but we did meet Mr. Bones, a cat who lurks around the hotel and follows Chris on some adventures. Mr. Bones appears to be just a normal cat during the daylight hours, but at night he gains the ability to talk to Chris and speaks with an Australian accent. It’s possible his story will be part of the mystery you’ll need to uncover. Regardless, don’t worry: The preview confirmed you can pet the cat.
Glendinning also confirmed various parts of the game can be skipped.
“We’re believers in allowing players to move through the story,” he said. “If a puzzle is too difficult, you can definitely skip it.”
That also factors into the game’s replayability, as you can skip scenes and puzzles you’ve already experienced to more quickly advance through additional playthroughs.
Overall, the early preview piqued my interest, as someone who loves musicals and a good mystery. The town looks cozy yet mysterious, and characters like Mr. Bones and Robert C. MacBrushy lend a great deal of personality to the game, leaving me eager to play and uncover the secrets of There Are No Ghosts at the Grand.
Players can renovate and work through the mystery next year, as There Are No Ghosts at the Grand is headed to Xbox Series X|S and PC in 2026, and will be available on day one with Xbox Game Pass.
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