Bristol-based indie gaming company Friday Sundae will launch its spooky mystery adventure day one on Xbox Game Pass, catapulting the studio’s debut title onto the world stage when it arrives in 2026.

With detailed interactive singing and dancing sequences, motion captured with CAMERA at the University of Bath, this genre defying game is set to captivate audiences across the globe.

‘There are No Ghosts at the Grand’ invites players to step into the life of an American who has just inherited an old hotel in a quintessentially, if somewhat run down, British sea-side town. Tasked with modernising the property and ‘supported’ by a cast of musical and quirky Brits, the game quickly reveals its darker side. What are the secrets the locals would prefer to keep hidden? Is Mr Bones the Cat really the only character you can trust?

Experimental

Anil Glendinning, No Ghost’s Writer and Creative Director, and Friday Sundae founder, explains what makes the game so different:

“Bringing singing and dancing into the game engine in an interactive way makes the experience genuinely novel and pushes us to be experimental in our approach.”

“We’re really pushing the limits of what motion capture can do in the way that we’re using it. That was one of the reasons we reached out to work with CAMERA on the research and development side initially.”

Rachel Glendinning, Friday Sundae co-founder and Production Director says:

“We’re a Bristol-based games studio with a vision for a story-driven game built around music and dance. We began exploring the concept using our in-house motion-capture suit, which had worked well for smaller client projects, but creating a full game required a state-of-the-art facility and a robust capture pipeline to achieve the quality we were aiming for.”

Transformative

“CAMERA’s support with motion capture transformed and made real our ambitions of what we were trying to do with this game” says Anil. “It is not an understatement to say that the initial 12 hours of support and help from CAMERA were transformative to the game and to the product.”

Working with CAMERA’s experienced Studio Engineers ensured that Anil, Rachel, and the team were able to capture high quality, precision data. This is an essential element of a pipeline of expertise that also includes Friday Sundae animators and the use of well-constructed 3D models.

“We started supporting Anil, Rachel and their amazing team of artists and technical developers through the ERDF ESIF programme,” says CAMERA Studio Engineer, Michelle Wu. “This gave them the chance to see what optical motion capture could deliver compared to the inertial suit they’d been using in-house.”

“What’s been great is the ongoing relationship we’ve established,” says Michelle. “Friday Sundae value the collaboration and make you feel like part of the team.”

Game Prototype

By working with CAMERA in the early stage of game development, Friday Sundae were able to create a prototype of the game.

“Everyone commented on the quality of the motion capture and that helped us to get a small amount of funding, from the UK Games Prototype Fund no less. This was also seen as recognition from the games industry and had a knock-on effect,” says Rachel.

The game is unique. It is a comedy horror musical. It has a full-length songs with ‘singing and dancing’ characters that players can duet with as they explore a crumbling British seaside hotel that is full of ghosts.

For example, players will meet a character Maddie on a boat, who will sing to them to tell them why she is annoyed. When she stops singing the player is presented with on-screen options to respond in song – something that hasn’t been done before and has gone down a storm with early game players for the novelty and surprise of it.

“The musical nature of the game really changed and challenged our technical requirements,” says Rachel, “Capturing precision hand gesticulations and facial movement was important to us. Hand and eye/face coordination has to be realistic and characters have to look players in the eye as they are singing to them. We really had to think about this whilst filming the motion capture sequences and in post edit.”

Trial Download

The great news is that eager gamers don’t have to wait untill next year, as 30 minutes of game play is available now on Steam for PC. Players are encouraged to leave feedback, join the Discord community and be part of the game’s journey to full launch.

Having ‘There are No Ghosts at the Grand’ available on the Xbox Game Pass and Steam for PCs when the game is released in 2026 is a real coup for Friday Sundae. With over 25 million subscribers, Xbox forms a brilliant platform for Anil and Rachel’s game, which is already gaining significant interest from players. In the first week of the announcement, ‘There are ‘No Ghosts at the Grand’ was added to 30k gamers’ wishlists – a number that has since more than doubled and continues to rise…

Anil says:

“We’re continuing to work with CAMERA. Adding their expertise, and technology elevates the product, allowing us to attract more support – It is acting like an incubator and accelerator.”

Michelle says:

“It’s been incredibly rewarding to witness the game’s development over the years and to be part of their journey, and I’m delighted they’ve received such positive feedback. I’m really excited to see where they take it next!”

Further Reading

For those who can’t wait till next year to get playing, an early trial version is available to download via Steam for PC. https://store.steampowered.com/app/3725190/There_Are_No_Ghosts_at_the_Grand/

Join the journey on Discord: discord.com/invite/vkRUFjASfd

Fans are advised to keep an eye out as the year progresses, as updated demos will be coming your way!

(There really are, No Ghosts at the Grand…honest!)