Perhaps one of the year’s most eccentric-looking games is There are No Ghosts at the Grand, the musical renovation ghost story from independent UK developer Friday Sundae. It’s the team’s very first game, and I got to go hands-on with No Ghosts to get a taste of what’s really going on in its small English town filled with singing, dancing locals. I also spoke with the game’s writer and creative director, Anil Glendinning, who provided some insight into the game’s wacky antics.
Story takes precedent in there are no ghosts at the grand
My short time in There Are No Ghosts at the Grand began within the Grand Hotel itself where I was tasked with renovating a small room on the first floor. Light poured through the windows, and the game’s talking paintbrush mascot, McBrushy, who inhabited a small screen on the renovation tool I had in my hands, talked me through how to use each tool. Sandblasting wallpaper, spraying paint, and moving couches in the room filled up progress meters in the top left corner of the screen.
Suddenly, in the middle of renovating, I received a phone call from one of the town’s locals, Maddie, who asked me to meet her outside the front of the Grand. My renovations weren’t yet complete, but I decided to drop what I was doing to see what she wanted. It became clear to me in that moment that this game’s story is given a slightly higher degree of importance than its renovation tasks, which can be interrupted by story moments or characters who might pull you away from completing them. Glendinning confirmed that if I wanted to, I would’ve been able to stick around and wrap up the renovation before moving on and meeting up with Maddie.
“Not everyone wants to spend a lot of time renovating and decorating a room and creating an environment… But some players really love that… If that’s not your style, you can just follow through with the story.”
After linking up with Maddie outside the hotel, we started heading down to the docks. On the way, I was given control of a yellow moped with a mysterious black cat sitting in the front basket. The driving controls felt simple, and the moped was smooth to control. There Are No Ghosts at the Grand isn’t an open world game, but being able to drive the moped on the way from point A to B was a nice touch, and hitting all the piles of leaves on the road provided a bit of extra fun on my short journey.
At the docks I was tasked with another renovation: Getting a small boat up and running. Three large parts of the boat needed to be picked up with one of my renovation tools and placed on the boat. The game’s scan feature was a big help here, as it let me know exactly where on the boat the parts belonged and how they needed to be positioned. Trying to figure this out without using the scan would’ve been quite difficult, and since it wasn’t exactly a puzzle, just a simple renovation, I was glad to have some guidance.
No Ghosts lets you sing right back
After setting sail with Maddie to our destination, she began breaking out into song right then and there as I was driving. The moment was bizarre in the best way. Suddenly, I was presented with two dialogue choices that had my character, fully voiced by Broadway actor Alex Brightman, sing right back to her in a beautiful, yet tense duet. Music is a big part of many video games, but I’ve never experienced anything like this before. Similarly, dialogue choices in narrative adventure games are also quite common, but I can’t ever remember picking a dialogue choice before that had my character belt out in song like this.
It’s clear as day that these musical moments are such a huge part of this game’s weird and surreal identity. From what I can tell from the game’s trailers and my time with No Ghosts, these characters have a lot to express through song: fears, ambitions, anxieties, anger. Glendenning noted that No Ghosts started as a simple ghost story and that the musical elements came about along the way. Much of the game’s music falls within the genres of ska, punk, and jazz, and Glendinning pulled largely from UK bands of the 80s and 90s, using them as inspirational fuel for this game’s musical numbers.
“It comes from the music that we were listening to in the 80s, so it’s very much the music of The Clash, Madness, Selecter, The Specials… More of that kind of genre. Music that is often angry, and it’s railing against a system that seems to be working against you. And that’s very much how the characters in the game feel… This hostile town, this hostile house, is robbing them of their futures.”
No Ghosts’ Decor can get super silly
After Maddie and I crashed the boat into the island we set out to reach, she began drifting away back into the sea as I was ashore looking for materials to patch it up. It was then up to me to find a place on the island to hunker down overnight. The game guided me to an old abandoned military bunker, and inside I was tasked with renovating one of its rooms to camp out in.
This is where the renovation features really got weird and wacky. After breaking down and vacuuming up all the junk and debris in the room, I was able to spawn in a bed, lamps, chairs, and other sorts of furnishings, and even spray paint the walls and floors with fresh wallpaper. I had a large selection of wallpapers to choose from and went with a blue sky and clouds pattern, a clear reference to Toy Story. I then decided to take a hard turn and placed down a gothic-style bed and as many similar-looking red and black wingback chairs as I could fit in the small room. My design was truly garish and wholly unrealistic in a survival scenario such as that, but I had fun putting the room together, and it’s clear that No Ghosts doesn’t take itself all too seriously when it’s time for players to decorate.
“What’s really important to us is that we cater to all kinds of different types of players… You can always return back to these areas and have total creative freedom about creating your ideal games room or pool room or arcade room or music room within the Grand Hotel and within the village.”
There are no ghosts at the grand can’t be put in a box
This game has so, so much going on. A weird talking cat, a very funny talking paintbrush mascot, a handful of locals who serenade me and who I can sing right back to, a mysterious American on the phone, all the Lovecraftian supernatural elements, the horrors, the secrets, the renovation mechanics. Pure joy and sheer terror, all mixed together. It all makes for an overwhelming and surreal experience that Friday Sundae has crafted. I can’t wait to uncover more of its tantalizing secrets and to hear more of its wonderful music. I just don’t know what I’ll be able to expect and what sort of weird turns await me when I sit down with the full game, but according to Glendinning, that’s exactly what Friday Sundae wants.
“We’re trying to recreate some of the games that we grew up with. Games from the PlayStation 2 era… the first Xbox era, before genres were terribly well established… We liked playing a game and not quite knowing what was going to happen, what we were going to expect… If you’re kind of questioning ‘What kind of genre is this? What kind of game is this?’ then we’re doing our jobs correctly because that’s exactly what we want you to feel.”
There Are No Ghosts at the Grand is coming in Q4 to Xbox and PC.
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