Early signs indicate There Are No Ghosts at the Grand

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Cozy, spooky, musical mystery with supernatural renovation mechanics unveiled for PC and Xbox

If there's something strange in your neighbourhood, who ya gonna call? Well, with all due respect to Ray Parker, Jr.'s famous Ghostbusters song, the answer is "nobody!" in There Are No Ghosts at the Grand, the upcoming musical action-adventure by indie developer Friday Sundae with a certain DIY vibe. 

When Chris David unexpectedly inherits a run-down English hotel from his (missing and presumed dead) father, it comes with more than a few strings attached. It turns out that "nothing is as it seems in the hotel" and Chris has "exactly 30 days and 30 nights to restore the crumbling edifice before it...or something else...claims him." That's because the once-luxurious old place is now haunted, no matter what anyone (or the game's own title) tries to tell you. And so, armed with special equipment left behind by Chris's father before he disappeared, and accompanied by a "sardonic cat," you'll need to go about renovating the building (after even the rest of the town if you're feeling generous) during the day. When the sun goes down, however, you'll need to battle ghosts and confront anything else that "shivers and slithers in the night." Making your task harder is that everyone in town is "guarding secrets of their own" – including Chris, who isn't exactly being forthright with his own "buried past." Perhaps "the only one you can really trust is the cat."

Presented in a charming first-person 3D art style, There Are No Ghosts at the Grand seems like anything but a ghost story at first glance. The surrounding "faded English seaside village is full of activities," allowing you to "take the fishing boat out to explore hidden coves and dredge up sunken treasure, explore the streets on your scooter, play mini-golf, comb the beach with a metal detector, or snap photos on the old pier." You can't entirely goof off, however, as there's a job to be done and limited time to do it. In order to "restore the hotel’s faded grandeur," you must wield "friendly, talking power tools – a sand blaster, paint sprayer, furniture cannon, and daisy-chain gun." (Everyone needs a set of those!) Sometimes it's as simple as pointing to "shoot paint and paper on the walls, blow out broken windows, and smash old furniture," while other times you'll have to "slow down to consider light environmental puzzles, using the hotel’s dark past to unravel cryptic clues."

That doesn't sound very scary, and even LESS scary is the game's musical component. As you chat with the various colourful locals, like the priest and the hotel's eccentric old caretaker, you'll find that they all have "their own story and song waiting to be uncovered, from spooky ska to wartime jazz to skater punk." Each song promises to be "uniquely theirs and sometimes surprisingly so." If you're to break through their defenses, you'll need to meet them where they're at and "duet with them to reveal their deeper truths." But about those ghosts... They only come out at night, when the hotel comes alive with all manner of supernatural creatures. To defeat them you'll have to transform your renovating tools into weapons that let you "unleash the vacuum on vengeful spirits, expose invisible assailants with the paint sprayer, or subdue slithering spooks with a well-aimed bookcase to the face using the furniture cannon." As you progress, you'll begin piecing together the "rich, supernatural mystery that winds through the Grand Hotel’s storied history."

If you're wondering when you can get your hands on this unique fixer upper, there's no set target date just yet, but There Are No Ghosts at the Grand will be "coming soon" to PC and Xbox platforms, and is already available for wishlisting on Steam.