There Are No Ghosts at the Grand

Friday Sundae is an independent British development studio from Bristol. There Are No Ghosts at the Grand, an adventure game enriched with musical elements, is this team's debut work.

It allows us to step into the shoes of Chris David, who, after inheriting a ruined hotel, has a month to restore its former glory. The situation is complicated by the fact that, contrary to what the game's title suggests, this place is haunted. Staying there after dark means having to deal with the ghosts wandering around. As we progress, we uncover the dark history of the hotel and its former owners, as well as learn more about the protagonist himself.

Gameplay

In There Are No Ghosts at the Grand, we watch the action from a first-person perspective (FPP). The way the gameplay looks is determined by the time of day.

Hotel renovation

During the day, we are busy renovating the hotel. We are given useful (but also talkative, as each of them is equipped with a display and speaker, as well as a kind of artificial personality) tools in the form of a sandblaster, airbrush, furniture cannon, and a special launcher (daisy-chain gun). The first one is used for stripping paint from walls or removing glass from windows, the second one is used for painting, the cannon can shoot furniture into designated places, while the launcher sucks in smaller objects (or shoots them, if that's what we want).

Exploring the area and meeting its inhabitants

The game allows us to explore the surrounding village and investigate the secrets hidden by nearby buildings. Exploration involves solving environmental puzzles, sometimes requiring only breaking a window and smashing furniture, and other times requiring a bit more "ingenuity".