Bad Mojo is a 1996 adventure game developed by Pulse Entertainment and published by Acclaim Entertainment for Windows and Macintosh. The game follows Roger Samms, an entomologist who accidentally unleashes a curse (the titular bad mojo) that turns him into a cockroach. The storyline in Bad Mojo is loosely based on Franz Kafka's 1915 novella The Metamorphosis; Roger Samms' name is an imperfect anagram of the lead character's in Metamorphosis (Gregor Samsa), and a cat called Franz appears in the game. The gameplay consists of guiding the cockroach through a series of puzzles.
Got Game Entertainment re-released the game in December 2004 as Bad Mojo Redux, packaging it with a DVD containing a variety of extra material.
Gameplay
The game begins in an underground hub with pipes to all the different rooms, which are sealed except one. By navigating from one room to another, the player unlocks the pipe to that room for easier backtracking. Roger is controlled solely using the directional arrow keys. As a cockroach, he can move small objects like cigarettes and bottle tops or weigh down precariously placed items.
In each room, there are hazards to avoid, lethal barriers to get around and puzzles to solve. The presence of hazards and ways to navigate to certain areas can be determined by observing other cockroaches. The player has four lives. A life is lost when Roger makes contact with anything deadly. When all lives are depleted, the player is sent back to the underground hub and must start the last room reached from the beginning (although the state of objects stays as the player last changed them).
A symbol of a flaming eye can often be found near living creatures, such as other cockroaches. Touching the eye causes the creature to provide hints to progress through visions and verse (voiced by Angelina). Background objects tell more about the characters and their history.
Plot
In 1995, entomologist Roger Samms rents an apartment above a rundown bar owned by Eddie Battito. Roger has embezzled $1 million worth of research grant money from a science corporation he had previously worked for and is planning to leave for Mexico City to start a new life. But after a small argument with Eddie, he remembers a little trinket that he had gotten in his early childhood: a cockroach-patterned locket that belonged to his deceased mother, Angelina. Upon its discovery, the locket transforms Roger's soul into a cockroach, and transports him to a sewer system connected to every section of the bar. His adventure takes him to the basement (which is also Eddie's bedroom), the bathroom, the kitchen, the bar room, Roger's room, and finally his research room. As the roach (Roger) explores his world and faces dangers such as rats, garbage disposals, and his own pet cat Franz, he is constantly being guided by his mother's spirit, who serves as an oracle.
The game explores the sad past of both Roger and Eddie, revealing that Roger had been abandoned to an abusive nun, was the center of bullying as a young man, and was never taken seriously by his superiors. Eddie has had just as bad a life, having his beloved wife Angelina die during childbirth, giving up his son out of grief, and his livelihood stumbling. Eddie does not realize that Angelina was Roger's mother, nor does Roger know that Angelina was Eddie's wife. During Roger's exploration, he is forced to extinguish the pilot light to a gas stove in the kitchen to save a baby cockroach that, in turn, assists him in jamming the garbage disposal with a spoon. This act eventually causes the whole bar to be filled with gas. Roger must then set off a smoke detector to wake Eddie and then finally reach the locket in his own unconscious body's hand.
There are four possible endings to the storyline. If Eddie escapes and Roger doesn't (if Eddie is warned of the fire but Roger is left on the floor), Eddie ends up as a homeless drunk. If Roger escapes and Eddie doesn't, Roger tries to flee the country but is caught, charged with Eddie's murder, and remanded to an asylum for the criminally insane. If neither escape, the ghost of Angelina narrates, telling of the death of both men, the destruction of the bar for urban renewal, and that the ghosts of all three of them haunt the places where their dreams died. If both of them escape, Eddie recognizes the cockroach locket (that contains a photo of Angelina) and they reconcile as reunited father and son before both reveal the truths about their pasts. The family is reunited and they travel together to Mexico with the embezzled money, which Eddie uses to buy a new bar while Roger sets up a small lab to study roaches.
Development
Bad Mojos development was troubled: director Vinny Carrella noted that there was "a pall over the production" and "no happiness, just pain". The original designer Drew Huffman came up with the concept of having a small character in the gameplay due to the technical slowdowns on computers at the time. To begin with, the game was codenamed the "Booger Project". Huffman and Vincent Carella were brainstorming the game with Phill Simon taking inspirations from their experience with cockroach infestations, Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis and the 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life. The puzzles that were implemented focused on realism and the capabilities of a cockroach. Parts of the cutscenes were created using Swivel 3D.
Some elements in the game required some specialists. A professional cat wrangler and trainer was hired to move the cat on the set and insurance was also required for the cat. Shortly after the PC release, Acclaim Entertainment announced they would publish a port of the game for the Saturn. However, it went unreleased, and has not been confirmed that development ever began.
Got Game Entertainment re-released the game in December 2004 as Bad Mojo Redux. All in-game videos were remastered from original footage. Redux runs in truecolor only, opposed to the 1996 release which required only 256-color mode. This change makes the videos clearer and more colorful. The re-release also came with a bonus DVD, which contained a making-of, art galleries and other bonuses. This DVD was omitted from the UK release.
The game was distributed by Nightdive Studios, who released the game in the digital storefront Steam on July 3, 2014, while GOG.com added it to their store on May 22, 2014.
On 2019, Xorcist released a vinyl soundtrack of the game's score.