the ’Zine

A Review of Bad Mojo

July 10, 2007 by Chris Canfield

Filed under: Behind the Scenes / 0 comments

I'm dry this week. I'm incredibly busy on Rock Band, and have simply run out of interesting anecdotes about random numbers. So I'm going to quickly review someone else's game: Bad Mojo.

Bad Mojo was a game from the mid '90s. Predating real 3D graphics, you play as a pixilated cockroach scampering across a vast plain of photographic backgrounds. Controls? Up, Down, Left, and Right. That's it. But within those limited controls, you can push things around, you can shimmy up walls and on the undersides of tables, pull things off tables, etc. In short, anything a cockroach can do, you can do. And anything a cockroach can see, you can see.

This is key to making the experience work. The whole thing feels grimy, gross, and real. Sure, a paint splatter may not have an impact in real life. But when you're right up close to it, and it's dribbling through the table onto the floor, and you can see other cockroaches trapped in the slime... the tiny world starts to seem more than a little revolting. At times you have to scamper through to the other side of a garbage-filled trash can, across the underside of a dingy mattress, or over dying rat. None of this is actually gory or gratuitous, but under a magnifying glass the dirty underbelly of daily life can be a little stomach-churning.

The feeling of being trapped in Kafka's Metamorphosis is completely unique. Some of the puzzles are frustrating, and the less said about the human actors the better, but the Bad Mojo team really managed to create an experience that has never been duplicated."

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