Dungeon Crawler Carl is a science fantasyLitRPG book series written by American author Matt Dinniman. Initially self published by Dinniman via online publisher Royal Road, it, and its six sequels, were acquired by Ace Books in 2024.[1]
The series follows Carl and his ex-girlfriend's cat, Princess Donut, two of the few survivors of the consumption of Earth's resources by an alien corporation as they are forced to compete in a dungeon crawl recreated from those resources for an intergalactic reality show program. As of December 2025, the first seven books have sold over six million copies, and plans for a television adaption, graphic novels, audio programs, and a tabletop role-playing game.
Premise
Carl, a Coast Guard veteran, and Princess Donut, his ex-girlfriend's cat, are part of a few million beings that escape the elimination of the human species and mining of Earth's resources by the alien Borant Corporation. To survive, they are forced to enter the World Dungeon, an eighteen-level dungeon crawl borrowing ideas from tabletop role-playing and video games, reconstructed from Earth's resources. The effort for Carl and other survivors, all known as crawlers, to survive are live-streamed across the civilized universe as a game show, Dungeon Crawler World, a process that has been used for several seasons by Borant and other corporations to fund the mining operations of other planets.[2] Among the gear Carl earns for entering the dungeon is an enchanted pet biscuit, and after she eats it, Donut becomes sapient, able to talk and use magic. Her high intelligence and charm make her the leader of their group, the Royal Court of Princess Donut.
Carl and Donut, along with several crawler and non-player character allies they meet on their journey, must fight mobs and bosses, gaining new gear, earning experience, and improving their attributes to become stronger for surviving deeper levels of the dungeon. On each level, all the surviving crawlers have a limited amount of time to make it to the stairs to the next dungeon level or are killed when the current level collapses. As part of the "Dungeon Crawler World", they also must seek popularity with the viewing audience to gain sponsors and get better gear critical for survival. Carl also learns from his interactions with alien allies that Borant is under pressure to complete "Dungeon Crawler World" as quickly as possible to stay solvent and avoid a hostile takeover, leading to less time and more dangerous situations that Carl and Donut must face.
Development
Matt Dinniman at the 2025 AuthorCon in Williamsburg, Virginia, holding a plush of Princess Donut.
Prior to writing the series, Matt Dinniman had made of living of going to cat shows and drawing illustrations of cats for their owners. During his breaks, he began writing short segments of the story via the digital platform Royal Road in 2019, where it quickly gained popularity. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, most of the cat shows were cancelled, and Dinniman switched to writing the series full time, as well as using Amazon for self-publishing [3]
While writing the series, Dinniman drew upon his experience playing MMOs such as RuneScape, as well as the concept of in-game chatting, which he noted "adds another element because there’s all these different dynamics happening at once."[4] Prior to writing the series, Dinniman espoused a desire to write a novel with a death-game setting; he also wanted to include a tortoiseshell-colored Persian cat after seeing one at a cat show where he was working as an artist. Dinniman has said he did not initially plan for the cat to be sapient, and that this developed as he continued writing the series, as he tends to create and embellish the story as he goes. This eventually led to the creation of Princess Donut as she is presented in the series, a character that Dinniman has stated is vital to the series. Dinniman is known for his interaction with his fanbase and allows his Patreon subscribers to impact some limited elements of the story by voting on the outcome of external factors, such as loot box content.[5]
The series includes some dark and comedic elements. In an interview with Grimdark Magazine, Dinniman stated that it was difficult to maintain the balance between these two elements and that rather than automatically write a comedic scene after each dark one, he instead relies "on the characters themselves to get from point A to B, and humor is oftentimes a major coping mechanism."[6] Dinniman initially kept track of the series' characters and storylines via a spreadsheet that grew up to 198 pages, requiring the use of a second spreadsheet to track the content on the first. The size of the spreadsheet eventually crashed Dinniman's computer, causing the author to hire someone to create a Notion database for better ease of use.[5] While working on the manuscript for A Parade of Horribles Dinniman reported that he wrote for about eight to twelve hours a day, which he spent in his home as well as at bars and coffee shops.[7]
In 2024, Dinniman stated that he planned for the series to span ten books, but that "nothing is set in stone".[8]
Publication history
Initial publication and Ace Books
Dinniman began publishing Dungeon Crawler Carl on Royal Road in 2020. He self-published the first book in the series on Amazon on October 2, 2020, in ebook and paperback format.[9][4] He would continue in this form until 2024, when print rights to the series were picked up by Penguin Random House, who released the first volume through their Ace Books publishing wing in mid-2024, while Dinniman was able to retain the digital publication rights.[10] Ebook rights to the series are still held by Dinniman, who continues to self-publish digitally through Amazon.[6] As of 2024, seven novels in the series have been published, most self-published before the series was picked up by Ace Books.[2]
In response to questions about whether the publisher would make changes to the series, Dinniman responded that the story would remain the same but that the series had undergone rigorous edits, and that the releases would contain parts of a bonus in-universe novella, Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret.[6]
Audiobooks
The main audiobook adaptations of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series have been narrated by Jeff Hays, who has produced the adaptations via his company Soundbooth Theater.[11] Dinniman has stated that Hays's narration of female characters is so convincing that he has had people ask him if Annie Ellicott, a Soundbooth Theater artist, was an uncredited narrator for the first book.[5] Some guest narrators have appeared on the audiobooks, such as Travis Baldree and Patrick Warburton in book six.[12]
Per Dinniman, sales of the audiobook adaptations of the novels have surpassed the physical and e-book copies of the series, and much of his fanbase first experienced the series via Audible.[5]
In addition to the main audiobook version, the series has a separate production called an "Audio Immersion Tunnel", with a full-cast, original sound effects and music.[6] According to the author, these will not be replacing the existing audiobooks and are a separate product.
Starting in August 2024, Ace Books took over publishing the paperback and hardback versions of the books. Each book contains a passage of the multi-part novella Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret.[22]
In a review of the first book for Locus, Gabino Iglesias criticized some jokes and said he found the book repetitive, but wrote that "the important thing here is that the novel never becomes boring" and that the "shortcomings are easy to overlook".[2] Tonya Cherry of CKRM favorably reviewed the series, praising the audiobook narration and calling the series "a wild ride that blends humor, action, and a touch of heart, making for an unforgettable journey."[23]
As of December2024[update], the first four books published by Ace had sold almost 55,000 copies.[24] In March 2025 the seventh book in the series, This Inevitable Ruin, ranked #2 on The New York Times' Best Seller List for Audio Fiction,[25] while the fourth book, The Gate of the Feral Gods, ranked #9 on the Best Seller List for Hardcover Fiction.[26] In 2025 the bookstore chain Books-A-Million named the first entry in the series as its inaugural Book of the Year, which is to recognize a title that "best embodies the joy of reading and the enthusiasm of BAM’s team".[27] By December 2025, the first seven books had sold a combined six million copies.[10]
Adaptations
Television adaptation
In August 2024, it was announced that Universal International Studios, in collaboration with Seth MacFarlane'sFuzzy Door Productions, acquired the rights to adapt Dungeon Crawler Carl into a television series. Christopher Yost is set to write the series adaptation. Dinniman expressed excitement about the adaptation, while Erica Huggins, President of Fuzzy Door, described the project as aligning with the company's vision for genre-bending storytelling.[28]
Webcomic
In 2025 Dinniman announced that a webcomic adaptation of Dungeon Crawler Carl was in development and would be published through Webtoon. The project was done in partnership with Aethon Books' Webcomic Branch and Laurel Pursuit. The first episode was published on July 17, 2025.[29]
Graphic novel
Dungeon Crawler Carl: Crocodile is an upcoming graphic novel set in the Dungeon Crawler Carl universe that will be published by Vault Comics. Plans for the book, which will be part of the series canon, were announced in August 2025; the following month, Vault Comics revealed that the graphic novel would follow the Crocodilian mercenary Florin DuPont and would be named Dungeon Crawler Carl: Crocodile.[30]Michael Moreci and Brett Bean have been selected to work on the graphic novel's story and artwork.[31] Funding for the graphic novel will be raised via a crowdfunding campaign.[32]
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