I remember working in the electronics department bored out of my mind at Kmart and digging thru the budget bin when I found this and I showed it to everyone; you are a cockroach....nuf said. It sounded hilarious your treacherous life as a cockroach all the hazards and rewards ? of being a disgusting bug. I will be the first to admit I suck at most games. I would still be stuck at the dock of Myst without the help of a 12 yo neighbor. But this one... I wandered out a few inches from where you wake up a bug and I needed to navigate between a spill a lit cigarette....for an hour....
If you have to close your eyes and count to ten after turning on the kitchen light for a late-night snack, you might want to skip Bad Mojo. Former residents of New York City reacted to this game with a shudder and a "don't tell me any more." Personally, Bad Mojo brought back fond memories of fourth grade—stuffing the school lunch leftovers into a milk carton and calling it goulash. Sometimes you just don't outgrow the fascination with the grotesque.
In this graphical adventure, you're an entomologist who's been turned into a cockroach on the eve of skipping town with grant money. Unlike Gregor Samsa, you are a regular-sized roach, and more importantly, you have a chance at redemption. You have to figure out how to get transformed back into the man you were.
The only tool you have to aid you in your quest is your tiny cockroach body—no opposable thumbs, no pockets, no gadgets. You drive your cockroach using the arrow keys: up for forward, down for backward, and left and right to rotate. You can move objects as long as you are heavier than they are, or you have a long enough lever.
The game is composed of digital video, photographs and around 800 computer-rendered stills with wonderfully appropriate background music. The digital video was shot on sets that were built to look just like the computer model, so the transition between real life and the model life is seamless, The imagery looks even better on a computer that supports thousands of colors. Your cockroach travels over the rendered stills and dissolves when moving from one still to another. However, you're not moving over a flat surface-objects in the stills have depth, and your cockroach body twists along the Z axis to reflect this.
After playing the game for only a few minutes, you really do start to feel like a cockroach. Movement is natural, and the roach-eye view of humanity is both amusing and disgusting. There are parts of the game that are too gross for young children, but teens will love them. Exploring the world of Bad Mojo is all-encompassing; there is nothing out of place to jar your suspension of disbelief.
The roach world is divided into six rooms connected by a sewer system. The first room has puzzles that acclimatize you to roachness and the game's bizarre logic. Gameplay involves figuring out where the room exit is and how to overcome the obstacles blocking your path. As you scurry around the rooms, you discover items that explain the history of the building and your transformation to a cockroach. You'll need to understand this story to make decisions toward the end of the game.
You can die in Bad Mojo. A particularly nasty cat has it in for you and there are some icky rats, too, among other traps. You are given four chances on a particular screen, and after that you are transported back to the entrance of that room—so save early and save often.
All in all, Bad Mojo is a great game. It's true that if you played the game straight through knowing exactly where to go, it would take less than a day to finish. However, the world is rich enough that it will take you much longer to explore the game fully. Unlike other adventures that lead you on a straight path through the plot line. Bad Mojo lets you crawl all over the floors, walls and even underneath beds to discover the right path.
Tafel, Kathy. (September 1996). Bad Mojo. MacAddict. (pg. 55).