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Revealed at the Xbox Games Showcase, There Are No Ghosts at the Grand is a surreal, first-person, narrative-driven mystery. It’s part-renovation game, part-ghost story, part-musical. See the trailer below, and read on for a full breakdown of our unique new game:

You play as a young American man, Chris David, who unexpectedly inherits The Grand, a dilapidated British seaside hotel along the English east coast.

Players will help Chris renovate and restore the old hotel using a set of talking power tools. But be warned… beneath the veneer of paper and paint you apply during the day, something horrible shivers and slithers in the night.

30 Days and 30 Nights to Complete the Renovations

To renovate the hotel, players will have access to exaggerated power tools such as the sand blaster, paint sprayer, furniture cannon, and the daisy chain gun, to blast the hotel back to its former glory. This isn’t a simulation though, players don’t have to be exact. Decorating and renovating is fast, fluid and fun. You don’t have to get every spot – just enough is close enough.

But with only 30 days and 30 nights to complete the job, choose each room carefully – because when the time runs out something will come for you.

Luckily, players are not alone. Meet your AI DIY assistant, Robert C MacBrushy. He’s a cross between Star Trek’s Scotty and Microsoft’s Clippy. He’s also an expert in all things DIY – and the supernatural, but we’ll come back to that.

With MacBrushy’s help, players will smash out old windows, blast broken furniture, splash paint and paper across walls, and shoot furniture cleaner across the room, like some crazy cross between Mary Poppins and Marcus Fenix. But sometimes, you’ll need to slow down and think, as you’ll also come across environmental puzzles that will need a little lateral thinking, and some hidden clues to solve.

Progress is made through the game by completing rooms and revealing their secrets, but you can only decorate by day. At night, you have other problems to deal with.

Decorator by Day, Ghost Hunter by Night

In There are No Ghosts at the Grand, the main character, Chris, has a secret. Although he inherited the hotel, he’s not just here to renovate… not really.

At night, once the decorating is done for the day, he searches for something. Clues hidden behind walls, old blueprints revealing hidden spaces, strange doors leading to strange places. Players will help him whilst also trying to figure out what’s really going on. There’s something unpleasant lurking in the hotel, something ancient that leaves multi-legged footprints across freshly painted walls. Scuttling can be heard in those walls, furniture moves by itself. At night, the hotel isn’t safe.

But don’t worry, Robert C. MacBrushy is here to help with this too. At night, when the world changes, so do your power tools, and they have hidden modes that have special effects on certain supernatural denizens. Unleash the vacuum on vengeful spirits. Expose invisible assailants with the paint sprayer. Take out an unpleasant spook with a well aimed bookcase to the face with the furniture cannon. If you learn how to use your tools, you can survive the night.

Quirky Characters and a Sarcastic, Australian Cat

At its heart, There Are No Ghosts at the Grand is a story about people and the baggage they leave behind. You’re never alone as you explore the hotel and the surrounding town, and you’ll meet each of our game’s quirky characters as you delve deeper into the hotel.

Each character is a custodian of a particular room that you can unlock: from Colin, the elderly caretaker in the lounge, to his daughter Lily in the garden. You’ll meet the town mayor, Maddie in the boathouse, and Adam the police officer in the cinema room, watching re-runs of old buddy cop films.

Presiding over them all is Mr Bones, the hotel’s cat, and perhaps its most mysterious resident. Like the hotel itself, he’s a creature of duality. By day, he’s an ordinary cat who follows you around and likes belly rubs. By night, he’s a sarcastic and mercurial character who waxes lyrical (in a deep Australian accent) about the hotel’s many secrets and hidden places. But is he a friend or foe?

Each character has their own story, questline, and agenda, which you can help or hinder as you play.  They also each have their own song because There Are No Ghosts at the Grand is also a musical.

A Musical Ghost Story

There Are No Ghosts at the Grand is a musical, but not in the traditional musical theatre sense. Think of it more like a cool, dusty album of British ska and punk songs from the 1980s that you might find in your dad’s record collection.

These are songs with attitude, bite, and hummable hooks. Each character will introduce themselves through song, the style of which is unique to them, from spooky ska to wartime jazz, and even skater punk.

You’ll be able to duet with them and make dialogue choices in verse to explore their story further. The songs are full gameplay sequences involving player action and choices, whilst the lyrics and furniture go flying.

Exploring Kingswood-on-Sea

Players won’t be spending all their time in the Grand Hotel. Right outside the door lies the village of Kingswood-on-Sea, a crumbling, spooky, seaside town, full of secrets and side activities.

This small open world lets players leave the hotel at any time, even at night, to explore its abandoned shops, winding streets and hidden mysteries. You can restore an abandoned minigolf course and play a round or two, comb the beach with a half-working metal detector, or find shops to renovate and restore, each with unique rewards.

The streets of Kingswood-on-Sea are full of strange little secrets, and they reward curiosity. Find a rusty old scooter that you can restore and ride through the village, discover an old fishing boat that players can fix up and take out into the shallow coastal waters, or explore the hidden coves and sunken bays. It even has a winch to dredge for lost treasures, if you can find the locations hinted at in clues found in the hotel.

Just… be back before nightfall. Under the inky blackness of the frozen North Sea, something stirs in the depth, and it slithers onto the land at night.

Summing It All Up

There Are No Ghosts at the Grand is a game about restoration and ruin. About strange townsfolk and suspicious upholstery. About music, memory, ghosts, and the awkward legacy of inherited property. It’s a spooky, funny, slightly tragic mystery, wrapped in ska riffs, talking tools, and night-time terrors.

You’ll renovate. You’ll investigate. You’ll duet. It’s a musical where you can skip the songs, a comedy with a dark secret, and a game that lies to you constantly, with a narrator you shouldn’t quite trust. If you’re very lucky, or very unlucky, you might just uncover the truth about the Grand Hotel. Assuming the Grand doesn’t uncover something about you first.

There Are No Ghosts at the Grand is a ghost story where the ghosts might be memories, or lies, or something crawling up the beach in the moonlight. The Grand Hotel is waiting, and is coming to Xbox Series X|S, Xbox PC, and Game Pass in 2026. Just… don’t trust the upholstery.

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