When I previously previewed There Are No Ghosts At The Grand I was impressed by how delightfully odd it is, with its bizarre combination of home renovation, adventure gameplay and musical interludes. The recently updated demo as part of Steam Next Fest expands on this further and shows how the game brings the renovation elements out of the hotel and into the weird wide world itself.
The demo adds two additional sections. The first starts with a gentle ride through town on your moped as you head to a local garden to hang out with Lilly. I can’t wait to get my hands on the full game to explore Kingswood-on-Sea, and despite this clearly being a fantastical game, it felt realistically British, from the people you see about town to the bollards denoting crossings on the road.
Most of this sequence is spent clearing up the gardens with Lilly, which did a great job of showing the flexibility of the renovation systems and how they don’t just need to be used for decorating the hotel. In each area you’ll be given a list of objectives, such as tidying up an area, fixing statues, trimming hedges etc. This guides you through the requirements for progressing the level but you’re free to put your own spin on things wherever you want. It might instruct you to plant flowers, for example, but it’s your choice to choose lilacs or something more closely resembling a Piranha Plant. This meant I ended up spending longer in each of these areas than I expected, and it was satisfying going through and cleaning each area up then putting my own touch on it before moving on.
The second part of the demo follows a similar presence but at a dilapidated arcade. You actually have to break into this area first, which again shows the versatility of your renovation tools as you use them to unlock gates and remove debris to allow you to drop into the arcade via a skylight. It’s another cool space to play around in, and gently guides you towards moving items into the right spaces while still giving you the freedom to tweak things as you see fit.
One of my highlights with the demo was during the first section where it broke out into another of the game’s hallmark musical sequences. The story had largely passed me by, which is partially down to me struggling to focus on story content during a demo, but I sat up and paid attention when a ska musical interlude started, complete with Lilly singing along. These moments are real highlights for me and partly why I find the concept of the game so enthralling. There’s not really anything else out there like it, as far as I can tell, so between that and the inventive twist on renovation mechanics, I’m very much looking forward to the full game.
If there was one thing to put a dampener on my time with the demo it’s the performance. I always found it odd that There Are No Ghosts At The Grand is releasing into Early Access but it’s clear to see why now. Performance is ropey at the moment, to say the least. Even on low settings it was dropping frames all over the place, and was particularly bad during the moped sequences. I’m sure this will improve over time but it’s potentially distracting enough to put me off playing until there are at least a few updates out.
There Are No Ghosts At The Grand is utterly weird and I love it for that. I’m a sucker for games that have you hoovering up rubbish, decorating spaces and generally doing housework, but here those mechanics are untethered to enable some really fun adventure sequences out in a mysterious town that looks perfect for exploration. I don’t know how they’re going to expand the mechanics or story as the game enters and moves through Early Access but I’m looking forward to seeing it all unfold.
There Are No Ghosts At The Grand is coming to PC in December 2026.
