Publisher: Acclaim
Developer: Pulse
Year: 1996
Platform: Windows, Mac

Rating: 5

I just got done playing as a cockroach!

One of the grossest adventure games I’ve played, Bad Mojo flaunts a ten out of ten concept, using photorealism to depict the adventure of a cockroach, allowing the player to only do things a cockroach would be physically capable of doing. Sadly, while learning to utilize the roach in this context is always fun, the concept is dragged down by a confusing plot, laughable acting, and some frustrating moon logic.

Taking inspiration from Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, the plot of Bad Mojo sees entomologist Robert Samms embezzle a truckload of grant money intended for research into how to effectively kill cockroaches. Bailing on his landlord to go on the lam, he trips in his flat, knocking himself unconscious. Out of his hand goes flying an enchanted locket with a picture of his late mother. Somehow, Robert’s consciousness transfers to a cockroach, who must do some soul searching of its own to change the lives of he and his landlord forever.

The building is a run down bar and restaurant with the two aforementioned tenants. You begin in the building’s complex plumbing system and find yourself in the basement. Gameplay is (generally) from a bird’s eye view and each screen is photo-realistic. You will come across grates, rags, food, cigarette butts, and everything else under the sun. The beginning obstacles are all about learning how to navigate the world without dying, as anything sticky or watery is bound to trap you permanently. Using only the arrow keys, you guide the roach around the environment. Occasionally you come across items you can push. An early puzzle sees you turning the lit end of a discarded cigarette towards a spider to avoid capture. Another sees you use corpses of dead roaches to navigate through a roach trap.

I would have loved an entire game of puzzles like this. Unfortunately, the hammy (and supernatural) plot constantly interjects itself. One way is by walking across photographs; the photographs come to life, showing a brief scene from the past of one of the characters. In addition to being horrendously acted, the events are often so vague that it’s hard to piece together what happened or how it relates to the plot. Generally, the idea is to get to know past mistakes and motivations of both Robert and his landlord, but everyone seems like a poor caricature of a human being. Slightly better is the various notes and newspaper articles you come across. Thankfully, the roach consciousness of Robert is still able to read.

What makes the plot really hard to swallow is that it’s always triggered by some puzzle the roach solves; this would be fine, except there’s no rhyme nor reason to it, making the puzzle-solving seem especially random. One puzzle early is especially obnoxious; you need to find a way to enter a space on the wall, but it’s too high to reach. There’s a box near the hole, but there’s a small gap that the roach can’t cross. Above the box is a bed, and underneath the mattress there is cash and loose change. The game expects you to make the leap of logic that if only you could get that loose change to fall down, you could use it to make a bridge.

But that’s not all, no. The game expects you to make the leap that if something heavy–say, the landlord–were to lay on the bed, his weight would shake the change out. But that’s not all, no. The game expects you to realize that if you push the sleeping pill on the bedside table into a drink, that the landlord will drink it and crash onto the bed, shaking that loose change down. What’s significantly more likely is that you push the pill–just because you can–into the drink and you solve the puzzle on accident.

The roach’s other primary ability in the game is to short-curcuit electrical currents (which real roaches can do). This leads to a couple of interesting puzzles, but one of them requires the knowledge of an actual electrician (plus the foresight to realize that random numbers scattered throughout the building somehow relate back to the electrical system). There is no way I would have ever solved this puzzle without a walkthrough, and it ruined a lot of the good will the game had built up.

There are in-game hints, provided by other animals you come across. For example, you can cross the path of a slug and a magical cut-scene will play where the slug uses a rhyming stanza (replete with images) to push you in the right direction. While the hints help point you where to go, they feel like the game’s way to make up for the fact that most of the puzzles don’t make a lick of sense.

All in all you will venture through six rooms of the house. Each of them is a visual treat in their own right. My favorite is probably the kitchen, where you must traverse a countertop and stove that has all sorts of disgusting food and scraps left out, including a pot of overcooked chili (with the burner still on). Not only is everything colorful, the puzzles here are all practical within the limitations of a roach with a human brain. I should also note that the movement of the roach always feels realistic. They really did a nice job with the photo capture. Sadly, it appears some animals were harmed in the making of the game, including a tarantula that never even makes an appearance.

Along the way you must avoid the landlord’s cat, who has a particular craving for roaches. Get too close to a door frame or a counter the cat is hiding behind and it’s game over. The game will clue you that the cat is around, but I still was eaten many times (with some hilarious full-motion video cut scenes of a real cat).

Speaking of death, the game gives you four lives to work with, and even if you lose all four, you restart at the beginning of the room you recently entered. You can also save an unlimited number of times, so there’s no reason to worry about making mistakes.

I wish I could say the game’s ending made all the aforementioned issues better, but the story is wrapped up in a bizarre way, making you feel almost as gross as the visuals in the game. I’m glad I played Bad Mojo, as it’s a unique experience I won’t soon forget. I only wish I had more fun while playing it.