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Illustration: Friday Sundae View image in fullscreen A very British sensibility … screenshot from There Are No Ghosts at the Grand. Illustration: Friday Sundae Summer games previews Games There Are No Ghosts at the Grand – stripping back the physical and metaphorical layers of a haunted hotel Renovate rooms, investigate the supernatural and watch people burst into song in this surreal British ghost story Jordan Erica Webber Thu 23 Jul 2026 15.00 CEST Last modified on Thu 23 Jul 2026 15.01 CEST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google A young American man arrives in a dilapidated British seaside town to take on the renovations of an equally run-down hotel, inherited from a mysteriously absent father he never knew. His power tools talk to him in a Scottish accent, the local people speak in baffling slang, and occasionally people burst into song. Oh, and there are ghosts. There Are No Ghosts at the Grand is a novel mix of genres – no bad thing in these times of sequels and remakes – but, according to the creative director of independent developers Friday Sundae , Anil Glendinning, it grew organically from a single goal: to tell a very British ghost story. Based in Bristol, Anil and his partner and co-founder Rachel Glendinning have ready access to the UK’s abundance of stately homes. “We spent a lot of time wandering around National Trust properties,” says Anil. “Peeking around some of the back rooms that are guarded furiously by red ribbon tape and pensioners who tell you not to go back there. What we discovered was rooms that were half in disrepair and half returning to a state that they may have looked [like] back in Edwardian or Victorian ages. And we thought: wouldn’t that be such a huge amount of fun, to do that in a video game?” View image in fullscreen Secret spaces … There Are No Ghosts at the Grand. Illustration: Friday Sundae Hence the main interaction: using a range of power tools to strip away mouldering wallpaper, rearrange furniture, vacuum up detritus, and apply a fresh coat of paint. (And, at night, to fight ghosts.) As you work, other characters chat about your choices, the room, its history. Many are based on real people, even the animated paintbrush in your toolkit, inspired by people Anil knew growing up in Scotland: “On the surface, our Robert C McBrushy character is an ode to Microsoft’s Clippy. But actually, he is a father figure, but one that spans a spectrum of different fathers, from one who is thoughtful and gives you wonderful advice, to one who loses his temper and berates you.” Several of the game’s quirkier features evolved in similar ways. Notably, the musical numbers were another British twist: “There’s a very blurry line between comedy and horror, particularly within UK movies and culture. We have always written our own music for the game, and during one sequence we thought we would play with the idea of the character actually singing it. It felt quite natural, being quite surreal, and having the players question if what they were seeing was real.” The game features voice talent including musical theatre performer Alex Brightman (of Beetlejuice the Musical fame) and Marcia Richards (from London band the Skints), but there is an option to skip the musical numbers. Drawing from his experience working on motion-controlled games for the Microsoft Kinect, Anil is keen to offer customisations to suit a range of players, such as an autocomplete slider for those unwilling or unable to paint every centimetre of a wall. Where they won’t make accommodations is, again, in the Britishness of the game, with no glossary for any slang. The actors collaborated in the creation and expression of their characters, leading to a natural style that might not always translate, even to other English-speakers, as with the (unannounced) British-Jamaican singer who voices Colin: “We allowed them to improvise and speak naturally in their own mix of patois and British English and find this really interesting natural code-switching, depending on which character they’re speaking to. So it feels really authentic.” The aim is for the characters you meet and the town they inhabit to feel like the real Britain that the developers know, in all its diversity. If, like the American protagonist, you feel a bit out of your depth; well, that’s kind of the point. There Are No Ghosts at the Grand is in development for PC and Xbox Series X/S. Release date late 2026. 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