Polybius Review - Urban Legend Meets Stranger Things
Format Reviewed: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781668044971
Release: April 29th, 2025
Pages: 352
Genre: Horror, Science Fiction
Publisher: Gallery Books
Author: Collin Armstrong
Stranger Things meets The Walking Dead in this shivery novel based on a terrifying urban legend about a small seaside town descending into chaos when an unusual video game is unveiled at the local arcade.
Polybius is an urban legend about a video game that appeared in arcades during the early 1980s.
The cabinet is said to have simply appeared one day and those who played it suffered from various neurological conditions such as amnesia, seizures, night terrors, and hallucinations.
The legend claims that the game was so addictive that even after suffering from these horrible side effects, players kept returning to the cabinet until they died or vanished.
The explanation as to why none of the Polybius cabinets can still be found today is attributed to their removal and destruction by the Men in Black who would record data on the players before collecting the cabinets.
There's a lot more to the legend including it's potentially very real origin point as a test market for certain games like Tempest back in the day and you can read more about it over on Wikipedia.
This debut novel by author Collin Armstrong takes more than a little inspiration from the urban legend by plucking the arcade cabinet right from the stories and placing it gently in the middle of an unsuspecting town in the early 1980s.
While this is Collin Armstrong's first novel, the 'author' section of the book states that he's worked in the entertainment industry for more than a decade developing, writing, and producing material for outlets like 20th Century Fox Television, ABC Family, Bleecker Street, Viaplay, Discovery, and LA Times Studios.
This stuck out to me because reading Polybius is very much like watching a movie or a TV show. Each chapter has multiple sections that are broken up visually by an emblem from the Polybius arcade cabinet to signal a shift in perspective to a new character.
This trick made it easy for my brain to reset and enter a new scene. It also made the book much easier for me to digest and helped me visualize what I was reading - something that is very difficult for me to do with my ADHD, which is why I often stick to graphic novels.
The book wastes no time pulling you in and presents an excellent story of how the game impacts the community. It also focuses on other themes like depression, being forced out of your home due to gentrification, and how we suppress our most primal urges in favor of decency - and what it takes to collapse that willpower.
On the front of the cover, there is a quote by Richard Chizmar, New York Times bestselling author of Chasing the Boogeyman. He states, "If you're a fan of Stephen King and Stranger Things... this book is for you."
That statement proves to be exceptionally accurate as the book feels like a season of Stranger Things with its own twists and turns along the way.
As someone who struggles with focus and reading full novels, it only took me about a week and a half to get through Polybius and I feel like other readers would reach the finale much sooner.
Because of this, the quality of the content contained within, and the fact that I picked this up at my local library, this book is a very easy recommendation for any fans of arcades, Stranger Things, or just fun horror novels in general.
Presented in a way that causes the book to read like scenes in a TV show or movie, Polybius proves to be an easy-to-follow horror novel that provides a fun and violent tale involving one of gaming's ealiest urban legends.
A quote on the front of the cover reads "If you're a fan of Stephen King and Stranger Things.... this book is for you."
That quote ends up being the most honest and accurate form of advertising on any piece of media in a very long time.