The pitch for There Are No Ghosts at the Grand might seem like word salad: mystery, renovation, exploration, horror, musical, and more. It’s a strange mix of gameplay and vibes that does, somehow, blend together just right for a tune that can get your toe tapping.
“You know, we didn’t start off with the intention of writing a musical,” writer and creative director Anil Glendinning says. “We wanted to write a ghost story. We wanted to write a ghost story set in Britain that kind of sent shivers up your spine and reminded us of TV shows that we watched when we were kids.”
This is the strange concoction that we learned about in an online, hands-off preview from developer Friday Sundae about There Are No Ghosts at the Grand. It started simple enough, with your protagonist Chris David, an American who’s inherited the crumbling Grand in a seaside British village, tasked with tidying up the lodge.
A magical renovation machine, somewhere between a power-washer and sci-fi arm cannon, gives you the do-it-all potential to repaint, de-clutter, vacuum, and re-arrange furniture. The tools seem simple to use, but allow for some player expression in paint choice, decor positioning, and more. It feels like an easy sell to house-flipping fans.
But a cell phone call from Mayor Greene, on a wonderfully dated brick of a phone, draws David out and onto a moped. She wants to investigate a nearby island to see if it’s where all the mysterious black goo that’s been troubling the town is emanating from; and after fixing up a boat to take you there, would also like to sing to you about why you should give back your inherited hotel rather than keep it for yourself.
There Are No Ghosts at the Grand is a musical, yes. But rather than showtunes or Gilbert & Sullivan, it draws on other veins of UK influence: ska, punk, and reggae. Glendinning name-checks bands like The Specials, The Clash, Madness, and The Selector in our chat. These influences run parallel to the broader vibe of small, seaside British town horror, too, with splashes of Doctor Who in there for good measure.
During the musical number, in which Mayor Greene sings her side set to a catchy guitar riff and beat reminiscent of your ’80s ska vinyls, the player gets a chance to (musically) respond in kind, which can affect your relationship with Greene depending on your answer. The immediate ramifications are not clear, but this choice, alongside optional renovation projects and exploration the player can undertake in the town, makes me curious to see if there are winding, maybe even branching, paths to explore.
For now, the boat and song get abruptly interrupted by a crash. And while your handy-dandy sci-fi fixer-upper cannon can fix the boat and remove the goo holding it in place, it sends both the boat and Greene out to sea in the process.
A search for shelter for the night leads to an abandoned World War II bunker and all kinds of ambient scares, but also some mystery and puzzle-solving. The environmental puzzles we see in the demo are, according to Glendinning, toned down in challenge for the Gamescom demo, but the final game will feature more difficult mysteries to solve and information to uncover.
These mysteries and puzzles also arrive in the form of memories. Renovations can be undertaken outside the Grand, too, and alongside making yourself a nice little bedroom inside the bunker, you can also use the tool to reform an area and trigger ghostly flashbacks of the past, hinting at the secret history of this seaside town.
An escape from the bunker leads to a surreal chase scene with creepy, crawly chair monsters in a delightfully tense finale. There are other bizarre mysteries to touch upon – a talking cat, a listening station picking up disturbing signals, maybe even ghosts – but all of those are better left for the final game.
There Are No Ghosts at the Grand already has a killer combination of ideas and themes. But after seeing it in action, I’m most impressed by how well all those parts work in concert; simple and effective renovation tools, catchy musical motifs, dialogue choices, and a creepy atmosphere all make this strange and exciting premise come to life. Friday Sundae’s hotel renovation horror musical seems like it could be a hot ticket when it arrives in 2026.
