One of the stars of the show at the Xbox Games Showcase back in June was the announcement of Friday Sundae’s There Are No Ghosts At The Grand, a truly quirky and unique looking musical story-rich RPG that is about restoring a hotel based on the coast of the United Kingdom.
This project has lots of interesting elements that seem to be baked into it, including how the residents can break out into song in styles of music that include “spooky ska to reggae to wartime jazz and even skater punk,” as creative director Anil Glendinning explained to us in an interview at Gamescom recently.
But while the game will have plenty of British nods, references, and cultural choices, it will also be a version of the UK that natives recognise and perhaps not so much the one tourists do, as Glendinning and technical animator Chi Chii Huang also addressed in the interview.
When asked about the British cultural influence, Huang stated: “First, the weather. We’ve got different kinds of weather. We’ve got overcast, raining, maybe sunshine if you’re lucky.”
Glendinning then elaborated: “We have eccentric and strange locals who don’t want you to be there. So, you know, very much like the UK.
“The character that you play, Chris David, he’s an American. And so he feels like a fish out of water. This isn’t London or some fancy historical home. This isn’t the Britain that we show tourists. This is a dilapidated seaside town like the places that some of us grew up in. And so it’s eccentric, it’s funny, it’s spooky. It’s like the shows that we grew up with like Doctor Who or Red Dwarf or The League of Gentlemen or Space.
“And it follows some of the same music that we love from that period as well. So we wanted to really show players a funny, interesting, quirky and spooky side of the UK that they may not have seen before.”
You can see the full interview with Friday Sundae below for more on There Are No Ghosts At The Grand, and as for when the game will be launching, it will be coming to PC and Xbox Series X/S “late next year”, and also as a day one Game Pass launch.