Seeing the initial reveal trailer for There Are No Ghosts at The Grand last year, I was taken aback by just how unique the game seemed to be. A musical, lovecraftian, renovator game - not an overly common combination of descriptors. After a recent hands-off preview event with writer/director Anil Glendinning, I was reassured via the new extended demo that the game is shaping up to be as one-of-a-kind as its marketing suggests.
The game has you play as Chris David, the recent inheritor of a dilapidated hotel in England. With 30 days to renovate the hotel, you’ll be tidying up the surrounding town and The Grand itself during the day, while fending off scary creatures and hunting ghosts at night. Asking Anil about the unique personality and charm driving the game, he explained it’s deeply rooted in the cultural diversity of Bristol, the UK city the devs are situated in. Various landmarks and iconography are referenced, and that British identity (sense of humor, too) will be immediately apparent for Brits and non-Brits alike. I deeply appreciated the attention to detail I could already discern as someone who lived in that very city for half a decade.
In this preview, we got to see two new missions, each containing a healthy variety of activities to partake in. These included cleaning up the Grand, venturing through town to the botanical gardens and the arcade, speaking with our friends, gardening, arcade game playing, and more. While not fully open world, the various locales surrounding the Grand look lovely and varied, so I’m excited to see where else we’ll explore when the game comes out.
Certain gameplay sections conclude with a musical number where you can select verses to sing, directly impacting your relationships with different characters. It was even suggested that your decoration choices as you renovate can affect both dialogue and the story overall, though I didn’t get a grasp of how these consequences manifest, how widespread they are, or what replayability it may incentivise.
Regardless, it’s looking to be a novel gameplay loop, and Anil suggested that continually surprising players with unexpected scenarios is a core raison d’être for this mixing pot of genres. Friday Sundae is throwing the kitchen sink at you, but seems to be avoiding the trappings of “a mile wide and an inch deep” thus far. Each activity can be completed relatively quickly, but all the mechanics seem well implemented, and the gameplay loop gives you scope to add your own flair once the bare essentials are taken care of.
With a cast featuring the likes of Billy Boyd (of Lord of the Rings fame), Ben Starr, Elsie Lovelock, and Broadway star Alex Brightman in the lead role, each performer is appearing to fully pull their weight with entertaining, snappy dialogue. The characters, their stories, and their songs are set to be a real highlight if this preview was indicative of the overall experience. The only hiccup I noticed was that during conversation there was an occasional awkward overlapping of lines. It got close to replicating natural conversation patterns and interjections, but wasn’t quite right and distracted me as a result, which I hope they can tidy up.
Performance is also a mild concern. There was a decent amount of stuttering in the initial public demo and during this preview, particularly during travel through town on your bike and a climactic, high-speed kart chase. A mild amount of visual bugs and glitches were also present, but with the Early Access model, the studio has a bit of runway to address these issues in due time. It’s important to point out that there was nothing egregious enough about the issues that I saw to convince me that they’re insurmountable.
Being self-funded and self-published, the game is coming together nicely and seems very ambitious for an indie title from a first-time dev. Friday Sundae still has plenty to do to get the game fully up and running for its Early Access launch in a couple of months and its full release later next year; but while I was assured there definitely aren’t any ghosts at The Grand, there seem to be plenty of reasons to dive in early this holiday season.
There Are No Ghosts at The Grand launches its first story chapter, consisting of 20 main missions, into Early Access this December for PC and Xbox GamePass (on PC), with a new extended demo releasing to the public during Steam Next Fest on October 19.
