There Are No Ghosts at the Grand is a novel mix of genres, according to creative director Anil Glendinning of independent developers Friday Sundae. The game 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?”
Gameplay and Characters
The main interaction involves using power tools to strip wallpaper, rearrange furniture, vacuum, and paint. At night, players fight ghosts. Characters chat about choices, the room, and its history. Many are based on real people, including the animated paintbrush 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.”
Musical Numbers and Britishness
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 Alex Brightman and Marcia Richards, with an option to skip musical numbers. Anil is keen to offer customisations, such as an autocomplete slider for painting. However, there is no glossary for slang, and actors collaborated to create authentic speech, including a 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 characters and the town to feel like the real Britain in all its diversity. There Are No Ghosts at the Grand is in development for PC and Xbox Series X/S, with a release date of late 2026.
