As a kid who grew up in the suburbs in the ’70s and ’80s, I heard many of the urban legends that were passed around like stolen issues of Playboy: Cropsey, Bloody Mary, the one about how someone flushed a baby alligator down the toilet and now it lives in the sewers below Manhattan.
But somehow missed the one about the weird arcade game that drove people crazy.
It’s that urban legend at the center of Collin Armstrong’s new coming-of-age horror novel Polybius (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), in which the titular arcade game really ruins some gamers’ days.
In the following email interview, Armstrong talks about his personal connection to the urban legend, and how it came to be the basis of this scary story.
Photo Credit: © 2024 Jennifer Tanksley-Coss
Where did you get the idea for Polybius?
Polybius was inspired by a handful of different interests colliding. I’d known about the urban legend since the mid / late 2000s; I’m a gamer, and someone who appreciates a wild conspiracy theory, so it grabbed me right away.
Separately, I’d been looking for a way into telling a dark coming of age story. The idea of kids on the precipice of adulthood, investigating an increasingly dangerous mystery centered around an arcade game, clicked right away, but it took years and a lot of false starts to crack the approach and to actually sit down and write it.
You said you’ve know about this urban legend since the mid / late 200s…
I was working a 9 to 5 job during the day, then writing and producing weird videos with friends in my off hours. We were in that mode of sharing whatever strange topics we came across online, and it was during this window that Polybius first pinged on my radar.
Have you been thinking about it ever since, or did it just come up recently?
I was in my 20s when I first heard about the legend, and I think it stuck with me because it incorporated a range of topics I gravitated toward.
I grew up during the fourth generation of gaming (SNES, Genesis, TurboGrafx-16), and have always been a gamer; I was a little too young for the golden age of the arcade, but was there in the ’90s as that culture was starting to fade.
As I said before, I also appreciate a good conspiracy theory, even though I’m not a believer or theorist myself. That was very present in the core story of Polybius, with the game appearing out of nowhere and supposedly being serviced by men-in-black types.
It also speaks to an era that’s interesting when it comes to folk tales and urban legends. With the amount of data we produce — and have been producing, for decades now — it’s hard for strange stories to fly under the radar and to not be quickly debunked. The Polybius legend captured a moment where, at least for me, it still felt like the truth of the matter could’ve been lost to time.
What was it about this urban legend that made you want to write a story about it specifically, as opposed to writing a story based on a fake urban legend you made up?
There was definitely a calculation behind it; a certain number of people would know the name and have an association with the concept right away. There’s also a long history of urban legends and folk tales inspiring works of fiction in books like [Alvin Schwartz’s] Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark and [Eric Walters’] The Rule Of Three, and films like Black Christmas and Alligator.
The notion of creating a legend from scratch is interesting, but there was just enough groundwork laid with Polybius to where I felt I could build on it in an exciting fashion. The book is essentially my origin story for the legend.
How close is the urban legend in your story to the real one? “Real” being a relative term here.
I tried to build around the core story: a game mysteriously appears in the Pacific Northwest in the early ’80s; kids who play it enter into depressed / aggressive / dissociative states; there’s a level of cloak-and-dagger government involvement; then the game vanishes.
Because of who my central characters are — a pair of teenagers, and the sheriff and doctor of a small town — I felt there was a certain low level of access they could believably achieve; anything beyond them scratching the surface of what Polybius really was would’ve been disingenuous. So, I built the legend out a little, but didn’t want to go into too much detail as it would’ve felt unearned.
It sounds like Polybius is a horror story, but what kind of horror are we talking about? Is it psychological horror, supernatural horror…what?
To me, it’s a horror story that’s grounded in reality. It’s about human-made horrors, mistaken and misguided things we’ve created that come back to haunt us. There’s definitely some zombie DNA to it, where you have a dwindling group of survivors holding out against a violent, braindead mass, but I never wanted it to feel too far-fetched.
A lot of the story really started to clarify for me during the early days of COVID. I think the concept of a screen being able to sow confusion and distrust, to turn neighbor against neighbor, is right there on the page.
Polybius is your first novel. What writers, or stories — by which I mean novels, novellas, and short stories, not tales told by kids under the bleachers — do you think had the biggest influence on Polybius?
Given the era in which I grew up, I read a lot of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, John Saul, Michael Crichton, and R.L. Stine (my kids are getting into Goosebumps now and I am delighted). Books like King’s Carrie and Saul’s Creature — coming of age stories told through the lens of the genre — had a major impact on my thinking.
What about non-literary influences; was Polybius influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games?
My background is actually in screenwriting; I’ve been working in / around the industry for close to 15 years now, so there are a lot of reference points for me across film and TV.
John Carpenter’s The Fog has been a favorite of mine for years, and the way it captures its setting had a big influence on how I tried to define Tasker Bay, the town in which Polybius is set. I mentioned the influence of zombie narratives on the story already; George Romero’s films, and Breck Eisner’s remake of Romero’s The Crazies definitely had an impact. And there’s a really odd, unappreciated late ’80s horror film called Pulse that’s about sentient electricity (yep) that I found myself going back to from time to time while writing.
So, when it came time to describing the game Polybius in your novel, did you base it on a real arcade game, did you make up a game, or did you intentionally not describe it?
The game’s been described in different ways; I feel like I’ve seen it likened to Tempest most often (a “tube shooter,” where you pilot a craft around the edges of a segmented shape, shooting enemies that crawl toward you).
In early drafts I followed that description, but eventually realized I liked the idea of the gameplay feeling more “next gen” for its players; I also wanted a concept that might click more easily for modern readers.
So, I settled on describing the gameplay as something akin to an “endless runner” (a genre that’s very popular in mobile gaming; folks might know Temple Run). Instead of running toward a goal, however, you’re being chased — you know something’s behind you, and your instinct is to look back, but the split-second that costs you might end your life. The idea of something lurking over your shoulder, gaining on you the moment you slow down, is a classic horror trope.
Hollywood has made a lot of movies and TV shows based on video games lately. Do you think Polybius could work as a movie or TV show? Or maybe as a video game? And I don’t mean the Polybius in your novel, but your novel Polybius.
I certainly think Polybius could be adapted. As I mentioned, my background is in screenwriting and I think that probably comes through in the pacing and structure of the novel. While there’s certainly more internal drama and conflict here than in something written expressly for the screen, there are also aspects that would lend themselves to adaptation.
Given that the story has a pretty defined endpoint, I think it would be better-suited for film, but we’re seeing such interesting work done in TV right now that anything is possible.
So, is there anything else you think potential readers need to know about Polybius?
If you’re a fan of ’80s style retro-horror, I think that this is the book for you. I always imagined it as a lost mass market paperback, the kind of book you pick up on your way to the beach or to a campsite that draws you in. It’s a fast-paced, scary read that might inspire a little deeper thought along the way.
Finally, if someone enjoys Polybius, what pop culture-related horror novel of someone else’s would suggest they check out next?
I loved Jimmy Juliano’s Dead Eleven. I’m a sucker for epistolary and “found footage” storytelling, and he nails that approach while establishing a sense of place and time that’s transportive. I think the book does a great job of capturing an era and putting relatable people in an increasingly unsettling scenario — something I hope my book does, too.
