There Are No Ghosts at the Grand

Developer: Friday Sundae

Release Date: Q4 2026

Inherit a crumbling English hotel and restore it by day—while battling ghosts by night. With a sardonic cat, a talking power tool, and a twisting supernatural plot, this is a musical mystery unlike any other. Will you be able to hold it together while everything around you falls apart?

I often like to start these posts by explaining a little bit about what the game is that I am writing about. What actually is There Are No Ghosts at the Grand…? It is a British renovation, mystery, drama, comedy, light acid trip of a musical, where you have inherited a hotel in a dying town where there are definitely no ghosts. I don’t know how else to describe it really…

During my time with the demo, it didn’t take long for the dialogue to endear me as our trusty tool gun won me over, guiding us through the quick tutorial of renovating one of the rooms of The Grand. As you are getting close being done, you are whisked away into other segments of gameplay, meeting characters, driving around a strikingly British town, a musical number and an amusing situation, all the while getting to use your renovation tools in so many pleasing and unexpected ways. Some segments gave the cadence of a puzzle game but every solution was very clearly signposted, making the experience feel more akin to a walking sim to me than anything else.

The demo is very on the rails and while there is a whirlwind of mechanics during the short runtime, and I am unsure whether the game will ever open up to give the players more freedom, or whether it is a strictly linear experience. Either way, there are ways to make your own mark on the game, decisions to make and I feel like there is no way you won’t have some amount of fun with it. My PC did struggle a little with running the game smoothly but I am reluctant to talk too much about performance as my set up is ageing and due for some upgrades.

Ultimately, the whole package made me smile throughout, sometimes through the humour and sometimes through the potential of the rest of the game to come. I have no idea whether we will be renovating the whole hotel, the whole town, the proportion of mystery solving to other tasks, the freedom we may or may not be awarded or the impact of our decisions, but I am keen enough to find out. I can’t say I have played another demo like it, fearless in its design and unapologetic about what it is.

Demo Length – <60 mins
At a glance
+ A unique experience
+ The humour hit for me
+ Creative use of tools
+ The town was so distinctly British just from a quick drive through
+ Quirky characters
+/- On the rails
+/- It remains to be seen whether the variety adds or detracts from the experience
– Puzzle solutions were quest markers with objective telling you exactly what to do