Throughout the first two lockdowns I spent many an hour playing Assassins Creed Odyssey, Ubisoft's 2018 open-world story of an exiled Spartan mercenary who gets caught up in the politics of the Peloponnesian War. At a time when we were stuck inside, I sailed across the seas as my crew sang sea shanties in Greek and visited Greek islands with golden beaches. I pondered philosophy with Socrates, joked with Aristophanes and slept with Alcibiades. I even outwitted the sphinx. Mine is but one example of how videogames encourage players to interact (in whatever form they think appropriate) with the ancient world; C.'s volume seeks to offer an original framework that analyses these games as sources of reception.

A quick preface offers summaries of key concepts that, before C.'s work, have often been thought of as disparate, including defining a videogame, classical reception theory and transmediality. The last is key to this study: C. argues that the fragmentation of the Classics offers opportunities for the material to be reclassified, and in this process new networks are formed. The work is organised not by themes but by videogame genres – action-adventure games, strategy games and first-person games –, through which C. explores sets of case studies of games. These ideas receive fuller treatment in the first chapter – provocatively titled ‘How Might We Study Ancient-World Videogames?’ – in which the Classics are described as a ‘narratological storyworld’ (p. 30). Consequently, videogames emerge rightly as a democratic form of reception: they are open to all, ‘fluid and useable’ and ‘universally possessable’ (p. 25). Special care is taken to position videogames as not being solely within the academy, and C. explores how the expectations of locating ‘historical accuracies’ in videogames differ from history as we expect it. As a result, the transmedial approach adopted throughout the work is presented early on as an effective method for exploring how the classical referents used in the games discussed portray the Classics.

In Chapter 2 C. explores the suggestion, as per the chapter's title, of videogames offering a ‘new epic’. In this chapter in particular the concept of transmedia is prevalent: C. focuses on the precedent created by the cinematic tradition of depicting the themes of violence, architecture and gender, which are then mapped in particular onto the God of War series. While there are certainly parallels between these two forms of media, there are moments when the claims made of reception are questionable. For example, C. highlights how boss fights in the game series ‘make heavy use of orchestral music and operatic singing, as in ancient films’ (p. 48); by association, it would be untenable to suggest that any art form that uses these musical motifs is alluding to ancient films. The tethering of some of these videogames to other mediums does allow for discussion of a precedent, but consequently there is the question if the games are merely derivative or if they offer their own form of the ‘new epic’. The discussion of the God of War series is at its most stable when exploring how the games challenge and manipulate tradition, which is seen again later in the chapter when C. turns towards smaller, independent games.

Chapter 3 is on much firmer (digital) ground in its exploration of how strategy games encourage players to explore the city and empire of Rome. C. convincingly looks at the ‘historical non-truth[s]’ (p. 85) – those of strictly straight roads and neat, square building programmes, for example – that are perpetuated throughout this genre. It is suggested that the image of Rome that emerges from these games is influenced by modern economic and political models; this is a Rome that is consistently constructed on a partly idealised, collective understanding of Rome, which C. terms an in-game ‘Roman language’. The chapter, by comparison with the one before, benefits in its autonomy from other mediums: the focus on players’ active construction of their own Rome, guided by whatever personal and in-game principles are relevant, means that processes of reception that are put forward as being inherent to videogames are much more convincingly portrayed. The chapter moves somewhat out of its original frame towards the end in discussing strategy games that look beyond Rome, but this variety is welcome, especially the discussion of Age of Mythology, which, C. concludes, ‘denotes a new way of strategic play that affords fresh and exciting experiences which thwart player expectations of both game-type and of the antiquity usually found across popular culture’ (p. 115).

The fourth chapter considers first-person videogames, in which antiquity is subjected to a process of ‘interactive experimentation’ that ranges from an apocalyptic Carthage (in Salammbo: Battle for Carthage) to a tense, horror-influenced mystery (as seen in Eleusis). This focus on experimentation yields mixed results and more discerning work on carefully delineating when game developers are using the Classics as a frame and when they are using them for a broader revisionist intention would have been welcome. Stronger material comes towards the end of the chapter, when Melos and Helena's Flowers are shown to engage with the myths of ‘Sappho’ and Helen respectively, and through which the games explore issues of gender politics. C. suggests that ‘A better understanding of these games can therefore be reached by embracing the grey areas around ancient materials’ (p. 157); however in doing so with a wide variety of games that are linked by game genre and alongside the transmedial focus, this methodology risks being focused too much on the margins without a more definite basis on which to ground the larger suggestion that these games use the Classics to reflect and comment on current issues. A brief conclusion and coda echo the ways in which Graeco-Roman videogames challenge perceived understandings of the Classics and how other genres (like science fiction or fantasy) also use the Classics as a conceptual ‘pic-and-mix’, opening the methodology used in this study for others to follow.

This is a fecund topic, especially, to take a somewhat stereotypical view that younger people tend to play videogames, given the slow erasure of the Classics as an academic subject from education systems. These videogames are a vital portal into a world that might otherwise not be immediately available to many today, and C.'s work is at its most convincing when the videogames discussed are shown to have particular, specific links with and representations of the ancient world. However, as valid as C.'s argument for a transmedial web of reference and reception that underpins these videogames may be, there are often moments of this study where C. attempts to suggest specific, direct claims of allusion at work in the videogames. What the work can sometimes lack is a more discerning attitude towards specifying when the Classics are being used as a frame and when there is a more meaningful engagement with the ancient world. Indeed, it is unfortunate that more use is not made of the development processes behind these games, especially where written and video blogs are commonplace in the advertising of upcoming games. With these contemporary works there might have been the opportunity for C. to interview the designers and the writers behind the worlds and narratives of these games, thus providing the potential to make more direct claims of reception.

C. begins with a description of the view of Roman Egypt that players can enjoy when playing Assassins Creed Origins, and similarly this work offers a panoramic study of more than 20 games that certainly prepares the field for further work. It is clear from this engaging and broad study that research into classical reception in videogames has successfully completed the tutorial stage – what comes next, as in true videogame style, is up to us, the players and interpreters of these digital worlds, to decide what to explore next.