Dungeon Crawler Carl
Hunger Games Meets LitRPG
Gretchen Picklesimer Kinney
**
When over 99.9% of Earth’s population is killed, Carl is busy rescuing his ex-girlfriend’s cat.
After descending mysterious dungeon during the apocalypse, Carl discovers that an alien race has taken over Earth and they want one thing: reality TV stars. Alien corporations have made big business over making conquered planets fight to the death, and Carl is a reluctant participant in the latest season that will be televised to quadrillions of viewers around the galaxy. Carl and his cat, Princess Donut, must work together to beat the dungeon, one floor at a time.
What’s so great about this story?
The story is basically the LitRPG version of the Hunger Games—aliens televise Earth “dungeon crawlers” who are trying to survive to get deeper and deeper into the dungeon. If they make it to level ten, they earn their freedom. If they make it to level 18, they become rulers of the planet. So far, no one has ever made it past level 13 without dying.
Most of all, the pacing of this story is wonderful. Often narratives can fall into the pattern of having separate discrete challenges—once the protagonist defeats one challenge, the next challenge is introduced. The protagonist proceeds step by step from one challenge, to a bigger challenge, then an even BIGGER challenge, and then at some point the challenges just lose their bite. Often this way of introducing challenges can feel rather arbitrary—when a new challenge comes out of left field, the reader may feel like this enemy was just made up by the author after the author ran out of ideas.
But the beauty of Dungeon Crawler Carl is that multiple challenges and enemies are introduced at once.
For instance, from the very first chapters, three main conflicts are established: (1) Carl and Donut must make it through the first floor of the dungeon, (2) Donut will have to kill a lot of people on the ninth floor of the dungeon, and (3) the alien capitalist overlords are up to something fishy. The only conflict resolved in book one is (1) making it through the first floor of the dungeon. But the other conflicts introduced give the reader something to look forward to after the centerstage conflict is finished. In book six of the series, conflicts (2) and (3) have been developed more, but they are still not fully resolved. In addition, more conflicts have been introduced! These interwoven conflicts make the pacing feel natural, and the reader is never surprised by some newer, bigger, made-up enemy—it’s clear the author has planned faaaaar ahead in the story.
Overall, Dungeon Crawler Carl fulfills all the genre expectations of LitRPG (dungeons, levels, items, races, classes) while giving the story a unique and creative spin.
I read through all six books in the series in less than a week (it was that good), and I actually screamed when I realized book seven wasn’t out yet.
How’s the character development?
Carl and his now-sapient cat Donut (or Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk) also have a very cute relationship, which is tons of fun to read. Pageant-cat-turned-dungeon-crawler, Donut is an impulsive, gregarious, and snobby cat that lives for attention. Plus it’s fun seeing how much she loves being on TV.
But Donut is so much more than a comic relief character: underneath her superficial exterior, she has complex motivations and deep emotions.
Carl is also a great complex character. Throughout the book, we slowly learn tidbits about Carl’s character—he had a complicated relationship with his dad, his relationship with his ex-girlfriend was equal parts fun and tumultuous, and he loves Donut far more than he lets on at first.
So is there anything wrong with it?
This story might not be for everyone—it’s very dark (an old lady’s head gets chopped off on page two and the MC kills a room full of babies at one point), but it balances this darker tone with light-hearted humor.
Also, the opening paragraph didn’t feel very engaging to me—in fact, I read the first paragraph, thought it was just going to be another low-quality self-published Kindle Unlimited LitRPG (I’m looking at you Quest Academy: Silvers), and didn’t touch it for almost a year until a friend gave it a glowing recommendation.