Like The Residents' work and Cosmology of Kyoto among others, Bad Mojo has a certain amount of freak value attached to it, its weird premise, strange atmospheres and distorted characters are exactly what a industry, which increasingly is defined by banality, needs like a shot in the arm. Bad Mojo, like the Residents' CDROM, has a particular sensibility, that is defined not so much by the technology, or the gravy train mentality of 'interactive media' but a sensibility that is as much to do with 50's horror films, and scifi paperbacks like Amazing Stories and Science Fantasy as anything else... Bad Mojo is an example of what's possible in this medium, when you foreground not the technology, but the sensibilities that are brought to the technology from elsewhere.

The premise of Bad Mojo is simple - you've turned into a cockroach, now try and figure out how to become a human again. At the beginning of the game, Roger Samms, an entomologist makes the metamorphosis into our roach protagonist, the result of being exposed to an ancient object he has uncovered. By controlling the roach you must navigate your way through the slime and grime of a rundown bar in San Francisco, by roaming around you attempt to pick up the pieces as to what the hell has happened.

Like the residents CDROM, Bad Mojo's simple premise is in many ways the works greatest strength. The work is not strictly defined as a game, or a non-linear narrative, but something in between, this 'something in between' is certainly one of the more interesting elements of the CDROM genre. Gameplay in Bad Mojo is carefully constructed around the notion of exploration, of poking your head into cracks and crevices, to see where they take you, as you try and figure out, not only what has happened, but where on earth to go in this new subterranean world, home to dead rats, fish heads, rat poison and food residue...

In Bad Mojo you don't just click the mouse to move around, but navigate by tiny increment movements of the arrow keys, twitching and poking about in the cracks, and grime, after all you are a cockroach, so this method of navigation is perfectly realised in the cockroaches 'stop and start' movements. Bad Mojo also succeeds in many ways where other CDROM fail to deliver in that the design of the game is extremely economical and well suited to the medium of CDROM where moving tiny bits of information around the screen (ie: a single animated cockroach sprite), instead of huge chunks of data (i.e. compressed Quicktime), makes for a far more compelling experience all round.