Three Ghostly Noses

Three Ghostly Noses is a parody game based on Three Ghostly Roses, made as a Secret Santa gift and as such is ~10 minutes short, with a rushed ending and only loose connections to the game in question. Despite the warning that the creator has not played the original game, the basic setup actually mirrors the base game very well and has a certain charm to it.

You, NOSEMUND, wake up in a strange world inhabited by even more noses as well as a single DATEKEEPER who offers you counsel and guides you on your way (Spoiler: he doesn't actually really help you, and no romance ensues).

Aside from two friendly noses who can heal and save for you, all other noses are marked in red and touching them will trigger fights. Many many fights.
You then traverse the dungeon fighting as many noses as you wish before falling over, to then find the GHOSTLY NOSES!!!


D-do you remember my birthday..?

The Battles:

Battles are what you will be doing in this game. Most of them are fairly easy, but healing items are scarce. Until you found power ups, you may wish to backtrack every now and then to be healed by friendly-nose #1. As I found out after beating the game, however, you are simply revived should you fall.

You have two spells targeting specific body parts - the points to use these (TP) are built by losing HP/being hit. You generate so many of them, you can use spells without worry. But there is no tactic to be used this game, as you can one-shot most enemies - with, or without spells.
Enemies vary in difficulty, but all act differently. Dog Noses are the easiest ones, and appear in groups of up to 5 - which is no problem, as they only debuff you and rarely if ever attack you (I have not witnessed this in my playthrough)

There are Zit Noses which will debuff you too, and lastly Hairy Noses which can confuse you and hit relatively hard. Yes, they tie you up mercilessly, and they do not leave your beard in orderly fashion when they are done with you.


Now that I think about it, what are these legs made of ...?

There are a large number of enemy groups, though you quickly realize there is no need to fight with many or any of them. The Ghostly Noses are extremely weak (or rather, easy to defeat - they do pack a punch), and so leveling is not required either.

It is a simple occupational exercise, and the simple standard RTP music does not help it too much.
The dungeon is more haphazardly structured than anything else. However, three white gates show you the general sections of the labyrinth in which the corresponding GHOST NOSES (blue), reside. The custom art is really nice to look at and makes for a very bright style in contrast to the original.

The Flavor:

There is sadly very little text in this game, and the main flavor is delivered through the prologue, but also through various in-battle descriptions and items. For instance, HP Lovecraft increases your max HP, what more could you wish for?

These snippets are absolutely lovely, though. As well as seeing the pun DATEKEEPER rather than GATEKEEPER see in action. Yes, a floating calendar welcomes you, and I love this little touch an unhealthy amount. The general flavor and style actually is fairly close to the type of introduction in Three Ghostly Roses, and I like this.

In-fight, Dog Noses sniff you and GHOST NOSES go "OooooOOOOoooooh!" to scare you into submission. As tiny as these things are, they are lovely to see.

The Short and Cut:

While this is a simple easy game, there is really not much to do in it other than to fight the THREE GHOSTLY NOSES, return, and have a quick uninteresting twist ending. You can tell time and patience has been running out for this game, but I would've loved to see more done with this premise - what IS Nosemund? Why is he here? Why is it all noses?
Maybe Edmund caught a cold and is dreaming, maybe someone tried to retell the story, but has an incredible nose-fetish.

Either way, compared to the lovely intro, the ending falls flat, which leaves the mediocre gameplay without much reward in the end.


A Frogge TM flipperino!

Other small things are that there is a preexisting save file for you to ignore, that a question says "Received Potion" instead of "Received Napkin" (which is the equivalent of a potion in the game), and that the ending is slightly bugged.
The screen turns black and "The End" flashes up - but you are stuck in the last map and are not returned to the title screen. You can repeat the last dialogue even and open the menu to manually return to the title screen.



All in All:

This is an OK game with cute artwork! It has much potential to have more fun with the base game, or the idea that was based on it (NOSES), but the ending concluded quickly and without much fanfare. The gameplay is neither all that interesting nor challenging, either.
It is what it says on the tin - you go beat some Noses and end the game. It is a lovely present given the limited time one has during the holidays to make this for an RMN exchange. And that's about it.

2/5 Noses. 3 were killed in the process of playing this game.