I love a good renovation game, but sometimes I wish there was a little more to them. A wacky story, locations to explore that aren’t rundown houses, or weird musical interludes are all things that the genre tends to lack, and, coincidently, are all things that There Are No Ghosts At The Grand has in spades.
Recently I got the opportunity to enjoy an hour long hands-off demo of the game, and what I’ve seen has me mighty impressed. From the surprising variety in environments to the charming dialogue and songs, it’s shaping up to be a rather unique experience
We kicked things off in the titular Grand hotel. Making use of our fantastical tools, it was time to renovate one of the lounges. The Furniture Cannon functions essentially like the Gravity Gun from Half-Life 2, allowing you to pick things up and place them according to the instructions for the room, while the Paint Gun lets you spray the walls to change their colour. The team were keen to impress on us that they’ve made this as frictionless as possible, so you don’t need to worry too much about getting things exactly right. When placing items you get some leeway on where they go, and painting walls ignores all the artwork and photographs hung up and magically paints under them, so no need to take them off to paint.
After placing the grand piano and a few chairs in the room, we took a phone call and headed outside to meet Miss Green who wanted us to accompany her down to the docks. This led to a surprisingly thrilling first-person jaunt across town on her moped with her and Bones, our mysterious cat, while we were told that a lot of the game actually takes place outside of the Grand. This surprised me, but I love the idea of being able to explore the wider town of Kingswood-on-Sea on the moped, getting embroiled in a mystery, before returning to the Grand periodically to continue with the renovation.
Down at the docks we took part in a puzzle that involved fixing the boat using our tools, which was a theme of the whole demo. You’re not just limited to renovating and decorating the Grand, you can do it basically anywhere. Once the boat was fixed we were then able to put in coordinates that we’d been handed by Miss Green, and the three of us took a boat ride to Crammond Island.
Partway through this ride Miss Green started singing. At first I thought it was just some lovely background music, but then realised she was actually singing. To me.
I didn’t know what was going on, but once I’d taken a second to process it, it was honestly fantastic, and the song was great too. Once she’d finished we were reminded that the game is actually a musical, with every character having their own theme. It’s an interesting addition to a game that’s so heavily focused on story, and provides an additional way to tell that story.
The rest of the demo involved getting abandoned on the island and doing some more adventuring, finding a WW2 bunker that we needed to stay in overnight. With our trusty tools we turned that decrepit old bunker into a trippy bedroom complete with king sized bed, vanity cabinet and Shining-esque carpet. The bunker led to more exploration, including a cool Aliens-type section and exploring the creepy ruins to uncover more of the mysteries of Crammond Island.
It was at this point that it really hit me how little of the demo had actually been in the Grand. We’d spent the first five minutes there but since then we’d been out exploring Kingswood-on-Sea and Crammond Island. The developer said that “story is king”, and that everything in the game is done in service of that story. While you may be decorating the dining room during the day, by night you’ll be exploring town and hunting ghosts, although you’ll be using the same sets of tools and mechanics to tackle both contrasting tasks.
It very much is an adventure game with renovation elements, rather than a renovation game with a few adventure elements shoe-horned in, which was an unexpected but very welcome surprise for me.
I’d like to take a moment to mention how stylish the game is too. From the characters’ voices, which run the gamut from English accents to Scottish and Australian, to Miss Green’s gorgeous theme tune, it’s oozing with style. One nightmarish sequence towards the end turned into FPS, with Chris blasting spidery armchair creatures. It was a great change of pace and felt definitely dialled up the creepiness from elsewhere in the demo.
Speaking of creepiness, the rundown and forgotten English seaside town of Kingswood-on-Sea is the perfect setting to house this tale of haunted hotels and hunting ghosts. They’ve managed to strip out the more depressing elements of the British seaside while focusing on all the parts that lend themselves to a spooky adventure game. It’s very well done and I can’t wait to explore it myself.
There Are No Ghosts At The Grand is an unusual game, and wasn’t the game I was expecting. That’s a good thing though, and what they showed is shaping up to be a rollercoaster adventure game that’s cleverly built around renovation gameplay while providing all the variety and atmosphere you’d expect from an adventure game with cosy and horror elements. I’m looking forward to seeing more before the game arrives in 2026, and until then I’ll just keep humming Miss Green’s Theme to myself.
There Are No Ghosts At The Grand is coming in 2026.