Ghost busting with all the wry, punned humor of many parodies in a top notch Class A Hidden Object game that is well worth full price.

Spoiler Alert but I can not really spoil too much.

Storyline: Brock and Kelly Burton have bought the house of their dreams only to discover it is full of ghosts. Lots and lots of ghosts. Fed up and about to leave, Milton Hobblepot appears on their doorstep to rid them of their ghosts. (Read the diary pages for the complete storyline. No spoilers here.)

Gameplay: This is a hidden object game, and mostly a hidden object game. There are four aspects to the gameplay: 1) hidden object list finds 2) ghost busting 3) solving a riddle and 4) "battling" the master/boss ghost. Each room of the house is one chapter, complete with five ghosts to bust, four areas (each with twenty hidden objects to find), four messages to locate (part of the find list), a riddle to solve and one master/boss to "battle". There are eight rooms total giving the entire game 640 total hidden objects to find, 40 ghosts to bust, and 8 master ghosts to send on their way.

Hidden object scenes: Each room of the house has a main area which is an extended area the player must move their cursor across to gain the total panoramic view and find the other three adjacent locations. Each location has a total of twenty list clues to find, which is almost double what other HO games have. They are no fractured finds, or interactive ones, just straight finds. This is not as easy as it seems. Each area though not cluttered is definitely full of objects all appropriate to the area. Believe it or not, most objects are actually in a place one would normally expect to find that object in real life. Statues are on tables or shelves, outlets (this game likes outlets) are found on walls, and tools are usually found in places one would expect like the floor, sticking out or up from whatever is being worked on, or actually in or around a work area or tool box. Nothing is unfairly hidden, though some objects are well hidden and behind other things. Some are just randomly strewn about as if someone dropped them in an odd place and could not be bothered to pick it and put it away. There is a hint button which recharges very, very slowly.

A warning about random clicking and misclicks: the game HATES both. The Help/Instruction area found in the main menu screen even states that. The game will punish the player too by having the master ghost show up and "scream" at the player. It takes about three misclicks (in a row and a bit more if there are finds in between the misclicks) before the obnoxious master ghost of the room shows up and "screams", which sounds something like a howl. After the first time the ghost shows up the screen will seem a bit foggy and every misclick (or few) after that the ghost will show up again. To clear the fogginess and gain some peace exit the scene then re-enter. The fog will have gone away and the player has at least three misclicks before they get screamed at again. My suggestion: DO NOT RANDOM CLICK.

Each scene also has animations in it, as the background objects move about: the soda machine flexes its arm muscles, dolls dance, slot machines spin, and things like that. There is a repetitive loop of music for each scene, so if that is a bother, turn off or down the volume.

Ghost busting: Every room has five ghosts to locate. The main room has two ghosts, and the three adjacent areas, one ghost each. The player clicks on the magnifying glass to start the ghost hunt and the screen will turn green. A hot/cold bar appears at the bottom of the screen to help locate the ghost. Locate and click on the ghost three times to capture it. A small blurb about each ghost can be found in the Log section under ghosts. Some are very funny to read.

Quick note here about the left side panel: (top to bottom)
ITEMS - the list find clues for the hidden object scene
MESSAGES - each room has pictures, notes, posters, etc. that appear here and one is a small dossier about the master ghost
LOG - is broken down further into the RIDDLE, GADGET, GHOSTS, CHECKLIST, and DIARY
RIDDLE is just that, the riddle for the player to find the "hidden" area of each room where the master ghost is hiding
GADGET - a picture of the ghost busting gadget needed to battle the master ghost (They are really odd, and amusing.)
CHECKLIST - Player progress in that room
DIARY - The actual storyline of the game (7 pages total)
Last entry of the side panel is MENU - Exit to main menu.

The riddle: Each room has its own riddle. The riddle is the location of the "hidden" area where the master ghost is "hiding". This location can be in any of the four areas in the room. So it is hunt and find to locate the master ghost. This is not to difficult since the cursor changes to something that looks like a written on scroll when the player is at the correct place.

Which leads to the master ghost (or the boss) and this is where the spoilers are (in a way).

Battling the Master Ghost: Each room has its own master ghost with their own agenda. Each ghost has something they want to accomplish but could not due to some mishap in life which caused their death. Each battle is a mini-game and they are all different types of games. If a player, manages to get 100% they receive a gold trophy and if they recieve a gold trophy in all the mini-games, this unlocks the "bonus" special award. I chose to list the mini-games just so the player knows what to expect. That is the spoiler. And yes, all these mini-games can be skipped.

The mini-games:
1) Photoshoot - Target shooting the ghost (with the camera) The cursor is a round circle like a focus circle in a camera. Head shots are the most points, of course.
2) Recipe - Follow the recipe while grabbing things off the moving conveyor belts. There are four parts to the cooking aspect based on hitting the green area on the correct dials. I can only remember tenderizing and grilling. Plus then the player has to serve up the meal properly.
3) Symphony - A mini version of 'Guitar Hero' without all the buttons but just as hard. Geez what a music "puzzle".
4) Cards - Low cards win and the player only gets to see 2 of their cards, but the player gets cheating glasses to look at the deck twice per hand. Tough game to win.
5) Garden - Tower defense mini-game to keep the invading hoardes of insects out of the garden. No comment on how badly I did at this, other then there was no garden left. So Sad. No flowers for me.
6) Racing - A racing game, based on how well the player can stop the gauge needle on the green area. There are four gauges total that activate in sequence if and only if the player hits the green on the gauge before it.
7) Painting - Keep the cursor area on the paint brush as the paintbrush draws a picture. Not as easy as it seems.
8) Ring - Kinda reminds me of a bullet-hell game. Drop a magnet onto the rings below, while trying to miss other objects and fend off the angry ghost's fireballs shooting at the rope with a fire extinguisher. The fireballs hit, the ring falls, start again. 60-90 seconds to retrieve all the rings (or as many as the player can).

I was actually impressed at the variety of mini-games and how hard some were. These games can be skipped and if the player even attempts them they are awarded a bronze trophy.

Overall, this was a fun and engaging game to play. I enjoyed all the subtle humor found everywhere in the game. For example the car (Greased Lightening) from the movie Grease being "worked on" in the 1950s style garage. The game is full of this type of punned humor, especially in the names of the ghosts like Allan Bonds, super spy. The cutscenes between chapters read like comic book pages but there are a few fully animated ones. This is definitely one for the collection, especially if one is a Hidden Object fan.

The Burtons just moved in their dream house but they're ready to take off as strange phenomenons are happening. However, a man named Hobblepop wants to help them: the house is full of ghosts with the stronger of them having a last thing to finish. And Hobblepop has everything to make sure that the house will be peaceful again... but the Burtons began to have doubts about the true motive of the man...

Mishap: An Accidental Haunting, while not being the plot of the year, is really pleasant: indeed, everything is treated on the tone of comedy. The ghosts have all an ironic biography and met their end in a funny way. And while you have a "main" ghost you have to help in the end, you can find five of them in each "scene".

However, finding these ghosts isn't really the main task: each location in the house is a scene and is divided in four pieces: the main one, where you can navigate from left to right and three smaller ones. In each of them, you'll find items that will help to write a riddle and to build the tool that will be used to capture the main ghost. That's the main gameplay: a pure hidden object game with list to clear.

The items are easier easy to find or very hard as they can be very small, very thin or hidden by another one. Mishap isn't escaping from the old way of playing hidden objects games. It means that people used to the adventure casual gameplay will be probably quickly bored. But you don't have a succession of scenes, you have also minigames so that you can satisfy the ghost. The goal there is to at least win a bronze medal - however, the gold trophy is a better objective, as you can unlock after that a secret award. Mishap is also letting you play minigames outside the game, so that you can improve your score if you didn't get the gold trophy. Games are going from drawing without a mistake to a tower defense-like in a garden without forgetting some fast challenges.

In the end, the graphics are reflecting that ambiance of comedy: they're very great. Each character is really reflecting their defaults and their death. However, get used to see their angry faces: too much wrong clicks and they're going to appear in the middle of your screen... well, unless it's deciding to appear randomly. It's probably the most annoying fact in Mishap.

The soundtrack is also good and very fitting to each location.

There is only one conclusion: you will probably find more fun in this classic era game than in Mystery Case Files or Mystery P.I. or Hidden Expedition, because of the ambiance. Mishap is really a very good hidden object game. You can buy it without any hesitation.

A charming and mostly easy HOG with a supernatural setting.
After each HOG section, which have one wide and three single screen rooms each, you get to play a mini game to complete that level.
It's easy enough to earn a silver medal in these but the gold is a pain.
Unless you want a small bonus image it's not necessary to go for gold though.

Sadly there are no achievements and the game is no longer being sold, but if you own this, give it a try.

I like this HOG a lot since it is quite fun and different from the typical games of this genre.

Even though the objects to search for are very typical, each hidden object scene has several animated thingies in it and many creative objects as well; like awesomely designed spooky furniture. The ghosts that you can collect have their own little fun stories, each floor of the house consisting of 4 rooms has an overall theme with a connected minigame at the end that you will be able to participate in with the tools you automatically create by finding enough stuff in the house.

I liked "hunting" the ghosts in each room with the magic magnifyier glass, but found the best part to be the "coded" riddles for each floor that can be put together with some of the findings.

The screenshots of some reviews that you can find on the net don't do this nice game justice at all, because they often concentrate on the intentionally weird portraits that will only pop up as some sort of "jump scare" parody as a "punishment" whenever you have misclicked too often.

Very fun spin on a hidden object game. The story used to tie it all together was enjoyable and the minigames inbetween scenes were just the right amount of frustrating. Getting to learn the stories behind all the ghosts I was catching was a really nice touch as well. The hint system was helpful but wasn't OVERLY helpful. There were a few times I didn't know what the object I was supposed to be looking for was supposed to look like, but those were the times when I used a hint and were few and far between.

Decent hidden object game. It took around four hours to beat. There's 8 different chapters focusing on a different ghost. Each chapter has four rooms to clear. Then there's a puzzle to figure out and then a mini-game to play that serves as kind of like the boss battle at the end of the chapter. This game sports some of the worst cover art ever.

Mishap looked promising, a fun way to waste a Sunday afternoon; it ended up being one of the most irritating games I've ever played.

It's one of those really pedantic hidden object games that doesn't let you click on an object unless you click EXACTLY where the game wants you to - more than once I disregarded an object because the game shouted at me when I clicked on it a couple of times. Then I got desperate and used a hint and the object I had clicked on was the right one all along.

Also, this game HATES it when you miss an object. If you misclick 3 times the ghost you're currently up against suddently appears right in the middle of the screen, howling at you. This gets old extremely quickly.

Text is tiny and all squished up.

The music is on a very short loop and it's so intrusive that I ended up just turning it off.

God, I hate this game.

no

Game is broken. Cannot finish as it is.

It's okay for an older title.