It's not the things the blurb claims, and I fell for it again. Good marketing, but not the book I expected to read.

A cautionary tale set in 1982. Tasker Bay, California is a small predictable town, where everyone knows everyone else (and their business) and where Andi and her mother, Rachel have moved after parting from her father in San Jose. Andi has a job at the local arcade and it suddenly gets busy with the arrival of a new video game called Polybius. However, the game's origins are scarce and seemingly overnight, the small community are fighting to play the game and not acting themselves. Andi and Ro, the sheriff's son, think it has everything to do with the arrival of Polybius. After all, people didn't start acting out until after the game arrived. And the code is unlike anything Andi has seen before. Andi and Ro, along with David, the sheriff and Ro's father and Rachel, Andi's mother, embark on a fact-finding mission to save Tasker Bay before it implodes.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and Gallery Books for this digital e-arc.*

thank you to NetGalley and Gallery Books for providing me with an advance copy of this book to review!

like a 4.5. this was GOOD. I think what I liked about this book the most is the fact that it exploded with violence studded with very specific details that will just live in my memory for a long time (THE CRAWFISH THING??? HELLO?????), but it also simmered with absolute malice the entire time. like it was just good at being both consistently creepy and also terrifying.

I did dock a couple of points because the explanation as to what happened was so pat and also like... wow I am only just now realizing they actually put it in the book description so there goes all the mystery yeah lol. I was also kind of annoyed by how obvious it was that the game was setting people off by literally 20% of the way into the story, but that annoyance did ebb away as the horrors started escalating and escalating. the epilogue was more or less just "well I gotta end this story now," except for the last couple of paragraphs, which really hit.

but yeah, I could have easily given this five stars tbh. really sick and really good.

Armstrong is a strong writer, with prose that's easy to immerse yourself in and characters crafted with nuance and care. Unfortunately, the subject of the story itself didn't do a whole lot for me; that's likely to do with my lacking interest in arcade games and the technological prowess required to analyze them. I believe this will appeal to a great deal of readers, it just wasn't a good fit for me.

I have been so excited for this book but I’ve made it to 30% and nothing has happened yet. I don’t feel that it’s worth it for me personally to continue. I will keep dnf/negative reviews off of rating platforms in order to not hurt the book’s current ratings. Thank you for the opportunity!

A dark, retro tech thriller that is perfect for giving you the creeps about computers, games, and your fellow human beings!
The scene is 1980's Tasker Bay, a small coastal town in California just north of Silicone Valley. The industrial tech revolution is creeping towards town, driving the generational fishing families out while high profile newcomers from southern California come looking for cheap real estate to invest in. When Andi's deadbeat boss buys an unknown, unnamed arcade console at an auction house, she begins to notice the people streaming in and loitering around the machine acting strangely. Distant, far away looks that snap to angry and aggressive without warning as the crowds grow and become more unruly. Pretty soon, the violence is spilling out of the arcade, and the town Sheriff, David, and local doctor, Rachel, begin dealing with unexplained crimes and blackouts. But can an arcade console really be the cause of such chaos, or is there a bigger player in this lethal game?
As the tension grows, so does the inability to close this book before the gut-wrenching finale! An interesting and contagious dread-filled book to launch you into a not-so-distance past but very plausible future!

Wow what a strong start for a debut author! I’m not one who is super into video games but i am a lover of zombies so when this story popped up on NetGalley, I just knew I had to read it as soon as I could. So what I didn’t know but found out after reading this book is the fact that Collin Armstrong was inspired by a real life urban legend from the 80s. After going down that rabbit hole and reading Polyibus I can officially say I’m obsessed! Now while there were slow ish moments where things got a little muddy the story still flowed pretty seamlessly. But all in all if you like video games and zombies or not I would definitely check this one out! Happy reading! X

Polybius by Collin Armstrong is a thrilling dive into the dark corners of 1980s urban legends, specifically the infamous myth of the mind-altering arcade game. Armstrong masterfully captures the eerie, analog creepiness of the era, blending retro video game culture with psychological horror in a way that feels both fresh and familiar.

This will definitely be one of my favorite books of the year.

I went in expecting Stranger Things with a haunted arcade game, what I got instead was a small town horror story in the same vein as Salem's Lot and The Fog.

The story was well written and I didn't see any issues with the plot. The pacing kept me hooked, as did the rapidly shifting perspective, especially as things get crazier around Tasker Bay.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the copy. Polybius stemmed from an urban legend that Armstrong elaborated on and created a physiological thriller/ horror novel. Polybius follows many characters, but are mains are Andi, a high school student who works at the town arcade, Ro, another high school student, Rachel, Andi’s mom and the town doctor, and David, Ro’s father and the town sheriff. They all live in Tasker Bay, California, where tensions are high because of an influx of new residents. A new game is acquired at the arcade and everyone wants to play. The more people play, they become more aggressive or paranoid. Andi and Ro are determined to find a way to save the town as the situation worsens. I think that people who like the vibes of the early 80s will really enjoy this story. It was a lot more descriptive in the violent situations than I thought but it was enjoyable. I had a very tough time getting into the story. There were too many points of views , which made it confusing. There were also pacing issues throughout the book. The beginning and middle dragged a bit, but the ending was fast paced.

4.25 out of 5 stars.


Andi's mother, Rachel, moves them to the small northern California town of Tasker Bay, which was once a fishing town, but now has more people coming in and taking advantage of their stagnation. Andi is not happy. All she wants to do is ignore everyone in town, graduate, and get back to her father, Devon, who taught her to love the intricacies of computer and code.

In order to get money, though, she takes a job at the local arcade under sleazy Mal who fancies himself the mob boss of Tasker Bay. She ignores him, too, and does her job.

One day, a new game cabinet is delivered. The outside is plain white, no markings. The game: Polybius. In the game, the player must run from a shadowy figure always outside the periphery, and makes their way through caves.

But the game itself doesn't seem to be nearly as important as the terrifying way that people who play change. From seizures to catatonia to violent outbursts, Andi sees the strangers she's kept at arm's length in her town change. Ro, who finds Andi fascinating and believes they might be cut from the same outlier cloth, forces his way into her life, despite Andi's attempts to ignore him, too.

She doesn't quite convince him of her crazy theory, but he believes in her. Together, they try to track down the maker of the game, and find the reality so much more siniter than Andi's initial conspiracy theory.

Excellent read. Video review coming soon.

Thanks to NetGalley and Gallery Books for the eARC.

I really was so intrigued by the premise of this book and video games taking over people and the horror of it. But this book really never took off for me, I am not sure why.

DNF at 19%: This book sounded like the exact type of horror book I’d liked but sadly, the author spends the whole time telling instead of showing and introducing too many characters without giving them any depth whatsoever…I just couldn’t connect with the book at all.

Polybius takes the urban legend of the same name and turns it into a wild ride packed with 80s nostalgia. We follow Andi, who is counting the days until she can leave the small town of Tasker Bay to pursue her dreams of working and living in Silicon Valley. She works at the local, rundown arcade named Home Video World with her smarmy boss. He purchases an unusual game, called Polybius, of unknown origins. The game seems to be very popular among the arcade patrons ... perhaps too popular? It starts to become bizarre. Almost overnight, the town is overtaken by rage, acts of violence, paranoia, hallucinations, you name it. Andi is determined to get to the bottom of what is happening, and her mission culminates in a discovery that chills her to her core. Thank you so much to Lucy at Gallery Books for sending me an ARC. Please check this out when it publishes April 29, 2025! I will be following up this review with a more in-depth dive that will be published on The Fandomentals, so keep your eyes peeled for that.

This novel takes the urban legend of the mysterious arcade game and pushes it out to a wild conclusion that was impressive in its scope and commitment. I had a fun time with this novel and enjoyed it and the characters, especially once it got started. The very first novels felt like they were doing more telling than showing, presenting us with the characters and then narrating their experiences to us instead of letting us experience them, but once we fell into a comfortable groove with the characters that went away. Eventually the portraits we get of the main characters end up being complicated enough to be interesting and not feel rote but also playing with expected archetypes and tropes enough to feel familiar. The writing was comfortable and direct, it didn’t ever feel superfluous or over the top, but balanced description with the emotional states of our characters in an effective, fairly conventional style.

That said, some of the plotting felt a little bit slow. Obviously the readers know something is going on with this arcade cabinet, so the amount of time it takes for the characters to realize it feels drawn out and not particularly satisfying. When they do figure it out the actions they take make sense, and the final act’s climax both make sense and are engrossing, but it felt like spinning some wheels to get there. It never felt bad or boring, the writing was good enough as were the characters and their slow development and inner transformation, but at the same time I wasn’t ever chomping at the bit to pick the story up again, at least not for the first 2/3, during which things did happen, and we do witness an escalation, but it still didn’t feel as propulsive as I would have wanted. I think in part this is also because the “mystery” of the arcade is pretty non-existent. Not only are there no real red herrings or wild conspiracy theories to track down and prove or disprove, but the answer to the mystery also feels like the simplest and least exciting (even if most plausible in the real-world) solution. What happened as a consequence of that is, like I said, delightfully unexpected, but the journey to get there felt like being told something you already knew.

There are certainly parts of this book that surprised me, and some of the character work, especially as it deepened and became more emotive in the back half of the novel, was exciting. There are a small handful of ancillary characters who we see breakdown and go on their own side-quests because of their exposure and those were fun, I wish there had been more, that could have increased tension and the emotional stakes. As it is, it is competently written and it is willing to follow some suggestions to their unexpected consequences, but it didn’t have any a strong sense of discovery or surprise for me, which I was hoping for. If you’re looking for a thriller that combines conspiratorial thinking with teenagers trying to find themselves then this novel certainly delivers on that front.

I want to thank NetGalley, the author, and the publisher Gallery Books, who provided a complimentary eARC for review. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

To begin, a thank you to NetGalley and Gallery Books for the opportunity to read an eARC for this title.

In his first novel, "Polybius", Collin Armstrong brings us back to the early 1980's for his take on the origin story of the urban legend for Polybius. As a kid growing up in the 80's, I can remember hearing rumors of an arcade game that was really cutting edge, with gameplay that was downright addictive, and that playing too much lead to headaches, violent outbursts, paranoia, and all kinds of other psychological problems. As I remember it, after only a few weeks, government "men in black" rounded up the few cabinets of the game, and it was wiped from the annals of gaming history since it was actually some sort of government psy-ops experiment and not a game at all. Working a brief stint in the video games/electronics industry at the turn of the millennium, I can remember the story getting some press within the industry and was the first time I remember a name finally being associated with the story -- Polybius.

Armstrong has taken all the little bits and pieces of the urban legend of Polybius, and, other than moving the origin point from Oregon to California, he has put together an interesting tale of the accidental acquisition of the famed Polybius game cabinet and the unchecked effect the game has on the residents of the sleepy town of Tasker Bay. We primarily follow the actions of Ro, the son of the local sheriff who has become somewhat of a disaffected loner in town, and Andi, daughter of the town doctor and a recent transplant to Tasker Bay who dreams only of returning to the tech heavy world of booming Silicon Valley. When the Polybius game cabinet arrives at the video arcade that Andi works at, its addictive nature starts to effect everyone who plays or even sees it played. Unfortunately, Armstrong tried a little too hard to give us a small town population-worth of characters, and as a result, many of the characters are exceedingly one-dimensional. Even the "main" characters are mostly cardboard cut-outs acting in the most predictable ways. And when the action starts going, the motivations for many of the myriad characters remain as mysterious to the reader as the cause of the "outbreak" is to all the characters in the story beyond Andi and Ro. I disagree with the description of Stranger Things meets the Walking Dead, but rather I would equate it to a stage-dressing version of Stephen King's "Tommyknockers" with the Polybius game cabinet taking on the role of the alien artifact.(sorry if that was a spoiler for a nearly four decade old Stephen King novel). The story and concept were good, but too ambitious without another 100-200 pages to better develop the cast.

Overall, "Polybius" was a fine, if somewhat cliché, horror novel -- the type of story that would make a solid B-grade movie on the SyFy Channel. It was interesting enough that I will keep an eye out for additional works by Armstrong in the future, and I only wish the best of luck to his future titles.

This was such a great read!! Combining some of my favorite elements of horror into this. Whoever said it had a tinge of stranger things had it so right. Was so nostalgic. I loved it!

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of Polybius.

The premise drew me in, primarily the 1980s setting and arcade games and I was stoked my request was granted.

First, the writing is good, but dry and flat, written in what I called a summary format.

As I kept reading, I was reminded of the "Wetwired" episode of the X-Files, which dealt with subliminal messages far better than Polybius and in less than an hour.

Second, there are too many POVs, and as a result, the narrative tends to drag as we switch from one individual's crisis to another. It's not hard to lose track of who is who and what is going on.

Third, there's a ton of violence, gore, and blood as people who have beefs with neighbors/colleagues/friends come to a head and the town edges nearer to the apocalypse.

Third, I understand the author is trying to build suspense with all this exposition but the multiple POVs ends up slowing everything down and in this way, it takes too long to get to the meat of the story.

I didn't like or dislike Andie; maybe because she sort of reminded me of myself. She was a moody teen not happy at having to move to a new town, and missing her dad, who she was closest to.

What I did like: Andie and Ro's parents belief in their children to figure out what was going on and believing they were on to something about Polybius.

Some readers note how dissatisfying the ending is but I feel the ending is realistic. There's no other way it could have ended.

This is not Stranger Things meets The Walking Dead-just so you know. Yes, it takes place in the 1980s and yes, there is violence, but that's as close as this comes. Having said that, Polybius can stand on it's own without favorable comparison to mega hits. Having grown up throughout the 80s I remember the tale of the mind altering video game making it's rounds during a time when the Satanic Panic was at an all time high and parents were convinced everything from music to comic books to videogames were possessing their children. Polybius does a fantastic job of marrying technology, government conspiracy, and mayhem into a cohesive story with intelligent characters, interesting interpersonal dynamics, and enough murder to satisfy any thrill seeker.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Gallery Books for allowing me to read an EARC of this book.

I was initially drawn to want to read this book for the nostalgia of arcade games, and the fact that it was compared to Stranger Things and recommended for fans of Stephen King. So I was hooked in, and hoo-boy this book did not disappoint!

Polybius gets off to a grisly, start right out of the gate, and then snowballs into a full-blown chaos apocalypse! The story doesn't slow down for a single second and will cause you to binge-read all the way through to the end.

The plot centers in the small town of Tasker Bay, near San Jose. Teenager and tech-whiz Andi is working at the local video store/arcade when a new and strange game arrives. It gets put out on the floor, and immediately becomes a huge hit with the town gamers. But this game is not what it seems, and slowly bad things start to happen in Tasker Bay, and one person after another starts to become afflicted with weird and violent symptoms. Ro, the Sheriff's son and also a gamer, hangs out at the arcade to spend time with Andi, and falls victim to the game's dangerous lure. When things go from bad to worse to anarchy in Tasker Bay, it becomes up to Ando, Ro, Sheriff David, and Andi's Mom to save the town. Failing that, the four must try to just get out alive.

This book is crazy good! There is so much going on, and non-stop action and blood. If you are a fan of thrillers, vintage video games, and government conspiracies/psyops, then this book is definitely for you. I loved the atmosphere and impending sense of dread & doom that persists through the book.

I will definitely be recommending this book to my book clubs and 80s-friends. It for sure has Stranger Things/Walking Dead vibes and is very much worth the read!