Dungeon Crawler Carl Game: Three Ways to Play in the World Dungeon

17 October 2026

If you are looking for a Dungeon Crawler Carl game, there are three real ways to play one. Two are the official licensed games from Renegade Game Studios: a tabletop roleplaying game for a group with a game master, and a card game called Dungeon Crawler Carl: Unstoppable that you can play alone or with one friend. The third lets you play inside Matt Dinniman’s novels themselves, as a crawler of your own, with a narrator that has read the book. Which one fits depends on whether you want a table of friends, a deck of cards or simply more of the World Dungeon after the last chapter.

This guide goes through all three, says who each suits, and ends with how to try the last one tonight.

What people mean by a Dungeon Crawler Carl game

The series is already written like a game. Carl and Princess Donut have levels, stats, loot boxes, achievements and a system AI that narrates their suffering in cheerful notifications. So it is no surprise that readers finish a book and go looking for the game version. They usually want one of three things.

• You want to make your own crawler with friends. A class, a race, a terrible sponsor and a party. That is the tabletop wish.
• You want something quick you can play alone on a free evening, with bosses to beat and gear to collect. That is the card game wish.
• You want to be inside the book. You caught up on the series and you are not ready to wait for the next one. That is the reader’s wish.

If you were hoping for a video game, the licensed games announced so far are tabletop ones. The rest of this guide is about what you can actually play.

The three options side by side

The facts about the two licensed games below were read from Renegade Game Studios’ own announcements in October 2026, and the facts about the books from Wikipedia in the same month.

The Dungeon Crawler Carl Roleplaying Game

This is the closest thing to living a crawl with your friends. Renegade describes it as a skill-based tabletop roleplaying game that drops players into the televised chaos of the World Dungeon. Its announcement puts it plainly:

Designed for 2+ players: one or more crawlers and a Game Master

The Game Master plays both ally and enemy, which is a nice nod to the books’ system AI. You can play a familiar face such as Carl, Donut, Florin or Prepotente, or build your own crawler with a customizable class and race.

Renegade announced the game in November 2025 and ran its crowdfunding campaign on BackerKit from April 14, 2026, alongside Unstoppable. The publisher said the campaign passed 65,000 followers at launch, which it called the most followed TTRPG crowdfunding campaign of all time. If you did not back it, check Renegade’s store for when it reaches retail.

Pick it if you have a group that loves to improvise and someone who will happily play the cruel, funny voice of the dungeon. It is weaker for a solo reader. The game needs a Game Master who knows the world well enough to run it, and the evening only happens when everyone is free. If you want to see how a typed narrator differs from a human one, our guide to AI D&D covers it.

Dungeon Crawler Carl: Unstoppable

Unstoppable is the other licensed game, and it is a very different evening. Renegade calls it a solo or 2-player co-op card-crafting deck-builder set in the World Dungeon. You choose a hero, then fight neighborhood, borough and city bosses while you gear up and level.

There is a twist the books’ fans will appreciate: as you improve your abilities and equipment, the dungeon gets stronger too. That fits a series where every reward from the system comes with a catch.

Pick it if you want the feel of the World Dungeon in a box you can set up alone or with a partner, with clear goals and a boss at the end. It is weaker for anyone who wants to tell a story. A deck-builder is about the cards you draft and the fights you win. You do not walk into a safe room and talk to Mordecai about anything you like.

Playing inside the Dungeon Crawler Carl novels

The third way is built for the reader’s wish. You give a narrator the novel, and it reads the book before you begin: the floors, the people, how they talk, what they know and what they hide. You make your own crawler, step into the dungeon and type what you do. There is no list of choices. You can follow Carl’s route down the stairwells, cross it, or wander into a corner of a floor the book never visited, and the narrator keeps the world consistent with what Dinniman wrote.

This is what LLM RPG does. You upload a copy of a book you own, as a .txt or .epub file, and it builds an atlas of the book’s world before your first scene. Because it works from the text rather than from a preset, it works for the first book and for each later one, and for any other novel on your shelf.

Some crawlers a reader might make:

• A building super from Carl’s neighborhood who made it down the stairs first, and has been quietly hoarding healing potions ever since.
• A crawler who only wants to stay off camera, in a dungeon built to be watched.
• A dog walker whose client’s pet got a little too much intelligence from the system, and has opinions about it.
• A former gym teacher who treats every tutorial guild like a fitness test.

Pick it if what you miss after the last page is the World Dungeon itself, and you would rather be a new crawler there than replay Carl’s choices. It is weaker for players who want cards, dice or a group. It is written and typed, like a patient game master who never tires. It also needs the book file, so you use your own copy.

Where the books fit

It helps to know how much world there is to play in. Dungeon Crawler Carl began in 2020, when Dinniman self-published the first book, and the series grew one book at a time from there. Ace Books has since republished the series in print. A television adaptation is in development at Peacock. Each book is a separate file, so a reader can start a crawl inside a later floor as easily as inside the first one, as long as they own that book.

What it takes to start each one

With LLM RPG you can play a ready-made world for five turns with no account at all, and signing up adds free credits. The current plans are on the pricing page.

How to start a Dungeon Crawler Carl game tonight

If playing inside the book sounds right, this is the whole path.

1. Try it with no account. Open a ready-made world and play five turns. A few minutes tells you whether typing your own actions suits you.
2. Sign up with your email if it does. You get a one-time code, no password.
3. Upload the book. Choose your copy of Dungeon Crawler Carl as a .txt or .epub file. The narrator reads it and builds the world before you play.
4. Make your crawler. You are a new person in the book’s dungeon, so you can be anyone, with any odd skill your old life gave you.
5. Type what you do. “I open the bronze box before anyone else can see it.” “I ask the safe room’s bartender what floor three is really like.” The narrator answers in the book’s voice and remembers what you did.

If you like worlds where the rules are part of the story, our Wheel of Time game and Fourth Wing game guides follow the same idea, and solo role playing games covers playing alone more widely.

When one of the others is the better choice

Be honest about the evening you want. If you have a group that loves to improvise, the official roleplaying game gives you a crawl nobody else will ever have, with a Game Master playing the dungeon’s cruel sense of humour live. If you want a tight, replayable boss fight alone or with a partner, Unstoppable is made for exactly that, and its stronger-dungeon twist feels right for the series.

A written game fits a different moment: you have just closed the latest book, the next one is a long way off, and you want to stay in the World Dungeon as yourself. That is the moment it was built for.

Step inside a book free →