Dungeon Crawler Karl is a science fantasy LitRPG book series written by American author Matt Dinniman.

It’s comedy — with extreme, graphic violence and horror.

Entertaining, even if you don’t appreciate video games, like myself.

Initially self-published by Dinniman via online publisher Royal Road, it and its seven sequels were acquired by Ace Books in 2024.

It’s unexpectedly become an absolute juggernaut in the publishing industry, completely rewriting the rules for self-published web serials.

We’re Obsessed With ‘Dungeon Crawler Carl’ and Think You’ll Be Too

A massive portion of this success is driven by the audio format. The series has accumulated over 140 million hours of listening time through Soundbooth Theater and Audible. The audio book reader is great ➙ Jeff Hays.

An alien corporation instantly flattens every man-made structure on Earth, killing billions of people indoors.

The remaining survivors are herded into a massive, 18-level subterranean dungeon.

This dungeon operates as a sadistic, televised intergalactic reality game show watched by trillions of aliens across the universe.

To survive, the “crawlers” must fight monsters, level up their stats, find gear, and entertain the bloodthirsty audience to gain sponsors

• Carl: A 27-year-old Coast Guard veteran who enters the dungeon wearing nothing but boxer shorts, a leather jacket, and no shoes—accompanied by an incredibly snarky AI that has a strange obsession with his bare feet.
• Princess Donut: His ex-girlfriend’s prize-winning Persian show cat. After consuming a magical pet biscuit early on, she gains human-level sentience, the ability to speak, and becomes a powerful, spell-slinging diva

Why is Carl with his ex-girlfriend’s fussy cat? Prior to writing the series, Matt Dinniman had made his living going to cat shows and drawing illustrations of cats for their owners. When Covid hit, those cat shows were cancelled, so he spent his time writing.

It reminds me of The Bobiverse Series, which I found better.

The series averages an incredibly rare 4.7 out of 5 stars across over 350,000 community ratings on Goodreads.

The audiobooks hold a near-perfect 4.9 out of 5 stars with over 120,000 reviews, frequently cited as a gold standard for audio production.

Book 1 is Dungeon Crawler Carl.