The first-ever public demo of There Are No Ghosts at the Grand takes me just under half an hour to finish. And yet, in that short time, this game morphs from a comedy hotel renovation sim, into boat repair, then an interactive musical, then a small-scale survival game, then a narrative horror and, finally, (checks notes) a first-person shooter that involves firing furniture at haunted armchairs with spider legs.
If you, like me, watched the Xbox Games Showcase reveal and wondered “can it possibly include this much stuff?”, I’m happy to tell you: a) Yes it can, and b) This is going to be a real treat.
For such an unexpected execution, this game starts from a remarkably grounded place. You play Chris David, an American who inherits The Grand, a dilapidated seaside English hotel – and subsequently upsets the entire town by deciding to renovate it (and, hopefully, hunt down its spectral secrets along the way).
Lest you think this a po-faced take on gentrification, however, just a few moments with the demo will show you quite how wild developer Friday Sundae are going to get with that basic idea. Your main interaction with the world comes through a set of sci-fi tinged power tools – a blaster for breaking down useless items, a vacuum to clear them up (and eject them when you have a new use for them), a furniture placer that can move or create household items, and a paint sprayer. Oh, and they’re equipped with an… overenthusiastic Scottish AI.
When the demo begins, they’re put to deeply satisfying use in the hotel – first, blast the paint off of the walls, repaint them in a colour of your choice, destroy broken furniture, adorn the room with new items, and vacuum up the debris, leaving a fresh new lounge behind you. It walks a line between letting you know exactly what you need to do, but with enough freedom to let you feel as though the decoration is your choice. Painting walls, for example isn’t a case of meticulously covering every surface – once you’ve filled enough space, it auto-completes the rest – but the paint you choose, and its accompanying vibe, is up to you.
I genuinely could have spent my half-hour just doing this – but as soon as you get a handle on it, the demo switches gears. A less-than-friendly local, Maddie Green, shows up to introduce you to a wider mystery – unidentifiable slime has been washing up on the local beach, and she’s got a theory that it’s originating from a nearby island. Cue a (fully controllable) moped ride through the beautifully rendered town to the beach, a spot of boat maintenance (using the same tools to do so), a quick puzzle to enter the right coordinates to get to the island, and then a boat ride there.
It becomes very clear, very quickly that this is a much bigger game than it first appears. And that’s before Maddie starts articulating her feelings about David through song. Yes, this is also a musical – and a musical you can take part in. Halfway through the song, you’re given dialogue options, both of which cause David to sing a different verse of his own. It’s a joyous moment of surprise.
After an unfortunate crash onto the island, you’re then asked to use your tools for another purpose – scouring the area for materials with which you can patch the boat back up… before Maddie “accidentally” floats away, abandoning you on the island for the night. Suddenly, you’re in a whole new, freely explorable space – you search the island for a way into its abandoned World War 2 bunker, and use your tools to renovate one of its rooms… before the noises start, and a whole other piece of this game reveals itself.
In the dead of night, you begin to find “memory bubbles” in the bunker – and puzzle sequences ask you to replace furniture that was part of these memories in order to learn more. At this point, you realize this is now a gentle horror game – with jump scares thrown in (not to mention that Bones, a cat that’s been accompanying you throughout, can talk, and is unaccountably Australian).
After all of this, you emerge from a hidden passage back onto the beach – which is now covered in armchairs, a truly surreal moment that only gets odder once they sprout hideous legs and begin chasing you. Your power tools offer the option to “change mode” – and suddenly it’s a first-person shooter for a hot minute, as you fire vacuumed furniture at the monsters chasing you across the island.
If all of this sounds bizarre – well, it is. But the real achievement here is that it holds together – Friday Sundae has managed to use the same set of tools to pull together all these disparate ideas, and built a game that feels cohesive, not scattered. It begs a happy question – if all of this is in a single demo, how much farther will the full game go?
There Are No Ghosts at the Grand arrives in 2026 for Xbox Series X|S and Xbox on PC. It will be available day one with Game Pass, and is an Xbox Play Anywhere title.
There Are No Ghosts at the Grand
Friday Sundae Studio Ltd
Nothing is as it seems in the hotel – lurking beneath the veneer of paper and paint he applies by day, something horrible shivers and slithers in the night. Don’t believe them when they tell you that there are no ghosts at the Grand.
Decorator by Day, Ghost Hunter by Night
While the daylight lasts, restore the hotel’s faded grandeur by wielding friendly, talking power tools – a sand blaster, paint sprayer, furniture cannon, and daisy-chain gun. When night falls, those same tools transform into weapons against the supernatural. 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.
Restore the Hotel and the Surrounding Village
Restoring the hotel by day demands sharp aim and some occasional lateral thinking. You’ll shoot paint and paper on the walls, blow out broken windows, and smash old furniture. At other times, you’ll need to slow down to consider light environmental puzzles, using the hotel’s dark past to unravel cryptic clues.
An Eerie, Intriguing, Supernatural Mystery
At the heart of the game lies a rich, supernatural mystery – one that winds through the Grand Hotel’s storied history, its former owners, and the player’s own buried past. The hotel and its surrounding village hold more than meets the eye, with every townsfolk guarding secrets of their own. Yet beneath the surface, even Chris harbors truths yet to be revealed…even to himself.
A Ghost Story in Song
There are No Ghosts at the Grand is many things, including a musical. Each mysterious character you meet or choose to help has their own story and song waiting to be uncovered. From spooky ska to wartime jazz to skater punk, each song is uniquely theirs and sometimes surprisingly so. Duet with them to reveal their deeper truths.
A Village Worth Exploring
The faded English seaside village is full of activities. Explore the streets on your scooter, play mini-golf, comb the beach with a metal detector, or snap photos on the old pier. Take the fishing boat out to explore hidden coves and dredge up sunken treasures. Just be sure to be home by nightfall, because around here, things change when the sun goes down.
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