8 Games You Need to Play After Finishing Dungeon Crawler Carl

To put it mildly, an extraordinary amount of chaos unfolds the moment Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl commences. Carl, a Coast Guard veteran, finds himself stranded outdoors in the freezing winter wearing only his underwear just as every man-made edifice on the globe disintegrates. Alongside his sole nearby companion—a loquacious feline answering to Princess Donut—he is thrust into the subterranean depths of a terraformed Earth, which has been converted into an 18-tiered labyrinth designed for an interstellar corporate conglomerate’s reality program known as Dungeon Crawler World.

As Carl and Donut navigate downward through the labyrinth level by level, they are forced to improvise their combat tactics, survival strategies, and quick-witted maneuvers on the spot. Each floor possesses its own distinct identity and brand of psychological terror. Yet every single volume of DCC shares one unavoidable characteristic: It is agonizingly difficult to resist the urge to slam the book shut and yearn to experience that very level yourself—ideally without the mortal peril or the bloodthirsty spectators cheering for your demise. While we cannot commandeer your planet and pitch you headfirst into an actual death maze, we can suggest these video games that capture the distinct essence of each currently published Dungeon Crawler Carl installment. Dive into them, and before long, you might just find yourself on the receiving end of a sarcastic accolade or a scandalous bounty delivered straight from the labyrinth’s malevolent artificial intelligence.

[Ed. note: This feature contains minor spoilers concerning the primary thematic elements of the first eight Dungeon Crawler Carl novels.]

Book 1, Dungeon Crawler Carl: Lethal Company

Image: Zeekerss

Where in Dungeon Crawler Carl? Floors 1-2 – The tutorial levels

Where to play: Windows PC

In Lethal Company, a cooperative survival horror excursion, you and your thoroughly expendable crewmates are tasked with scavenging debris on desolate moons to maximize profits for a corporate entity that regards your potential demise with utter apathy. You don’t even warrant a proper moniker; your official designation is simply “Employee!” Both in this title and throughout Dungeon Crawler Carl, protagonists must contend with the constant threat of gruesome torment stemming from minor miscalculations, nonsensical environmental physics, and the psychological defense mechanism of deploying dark humor to conceal sheer panic. The overriding atmosphere suggests that employee orientation and systematic eradication are one and the same process. You will either pull through, or you won’t—and your corporate overlords will remain completely unfazed.

Book 2, Carl’s Doomsday Scenario: Baldur’s Gate 3’s Act 3

Image: Larian Studios

Where in Dungeon Crawler Carl? Floor 3 – The Over City

Where to play: PS5, Windows PC, Xbox Series X

Following the introductory phases of DCC lies The Over City, an immediately overwhelming, dilapidated urban expanse that evokes the aesthetic of a fantasy-themed Las Vegas fused with a necrotic carnival. Everywhere you turn, you are accosted by optional tasks, perpetually disgruntled non-player characters, and welcoming taverns or emporiums eager to drain your financial resources. Does that description ring a bell? It mirrors Act 3 of Baldur’s Gate 3 precisely. Upon finally breaching the sprawling metropolis of Baldur’s Gate, players notoriously experience intense sensory overload. There is simply too much activity demanding your attention, and charting a course through the pandemonium can induce genuine anxiety—yet that very disorder breathes vibrant life into the setting. Furthermore, since Carl and Donut undergo mandatory class and race re-specifications on this particular floor, what a magnificent excuse to immerse yourself in a game featuring a robust character customization suite.

Book 3, The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook: Antichamber

Where in Dungeon Crawler Carl? Floor 4 – The Iron Tangle

Where to play: Windows PC

The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook opens with a cautionary disclaimer advising readers not to bother memorizing the narrative’s labyrinthine subterranean transit network. That exhausting responsibility belongs exclusively to Carl and Donut, not us. Even so, it proves nearly impossible to resist trying as you find yourself thrust into a topsy-turvy spatial puzzle populated by monster-infested railcars and cartographic layouts that actively deceive you.

Antichamber, an abstract psychological exploration puzzle game, replicates the surreal sensation of stepping directly inside an M.C. Escher lithograph. Corridors loop back on themselves in impossible configurations. Architectural spaces re-engineer their geometry with every single visit. You are handed a futuristic firearm capable of manipulating, generating, or eradicating physical matter entirely. Best of luck trying to conquer that mental obstacle course.

Book 4, The Gate of the Feral Gods: Tears of the Kingdom

Image: Nintendo via Nintendo Today

Where in Dungeon Crawler Carl? Floor 5 – Hump Town and biome-themed bubbles

Where to play: Switch

The DCC setting of Hump Town features a compact desert enclave enveloped by sealed atmospheric bubbles segregated into terrestrial, aquatic, aerial, and subterranean quadrants. To locate the ascending staircase leading to the subsequent tier, our crawlers must conquer their respective biome-themed sector via a fortress-dominance trial. This setup strongly recalled Nintendo’s monumental 3D masterpiece, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, wherein Link is required to clear labyrinthine enigmas across waterlogged, volcanic, sepulchral, and glacial vortex environments prior to assaulting Hyrule Castle. Granted, this comparison isn’t entirely absolute: Only one of these two interactive journeys features a razor-beaked, feral avian boss designated as Denise. See if you can deduce which one delivers that specific nightmare.

Book 5, The Butcher’s Masquerade: Predator: Hunting Grounds

Image: Illfonic/Sony Interactive Entertainment

Where in Dungeon Crawler Carl? Floor 6 – The Hunting Grounds

Where to play: PS4, PS5, Windows PC, Xbox Series X

The Butcher’s Masquerade, the fifth volume in the saga, operates as a high-octane amalgam of Jurassic Park and Battle Royale. Within its pages, Carl and Donut find themselves stranded inside a sprawling tropical biosphere where obscenely wealthy alien elites have purchased the privilege of hunting down and slaughtering the crawlers for sheer entertainment. What absolute bliss! Predator: Hunting Grounds aligns seamlessly with this core premise. It functions as an online multiplayer experience where your squad of elite operatives attempts to execute routine military objectives amidst a perilous jungle canopy. Inconveniently for your team, an extraterrestrial Predator is actively roaming the sector with the explicit assignment of tracking and executing you—complete with a devastating plasma caster. Will the alien hunter claim your skull as a mantle trophy, or will your unit successfully extract from the brush? While we are well aware of Carl and Donut’s ultimate fate, the destiny of your own squad remains entirely unwritten.

Book 6, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride: Inscryption

Image: Daniel Mullins Games/Devolver Digital via Polygon

Where in Dungeon Crawler Carl? Floors 7-8 – A whimsical fairytale maze (which they unfortunately bypass!) and the Ghosts of Earth

Where to play: Switch, PS4, PS5, Windows PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X

Donut and Carl manage to skip Floor 7 entirely thanks to Prepotente—an Italian Boer goat crawler who thoroughly wrecked the environment—catapulting them straight down to Floor 8. The eighth tier of the World Dungeon presents a meticulously crafted replica of Havana, Cuba, with one macabre catch: Although the avenues appear completely familiar, the populace inhabiting this iteration of Havana consists entirely of lingering memory specters. Here, the crawlers hunt down aberrant monsters to transmute them into tactical combat cards. The mechanics evoke classic Pokémon, yet the pervasive psychological dread and card-driven motifs bear a much stronger resemblance to Inscryption—a roguelike deckbuilding masterpiece defined by shifting artistic styles, sinister non-player characters, and cunning escape-room puzzles. Being forced to sacrifice weaker entities on your game board (such as helpless squirrels) simply to deploy more devastating combatants in Inscryption hits those same bleak, unforgiving emotional notes struck throughout DCC, where survival is strictly a solo (and feline) endeavor.

As an added bonus, if you yearn to experience that doomed storybook atmosphere inherent to the skipped fairytale level, seek out Slay the Princess. Its recurring mortality cycles and inescapable labyrinth motifs lean heavily into tragedy, yet the resulting artistic journey is breathtaking.

Book 7, This Inevitable Ruin: Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord

Image: Taleworlds

Where in Dungeon Crawler Carl? Floor 9 – Faction Wars

Where to play: PS4, PS5, Windows PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X

Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord serves as a sprawling medieval sandbox simulator where you command military forces on an epic strategic scale. Upon initiating a fresh campaign, you begin as an absolute nobody. That status shifts dramatically once you master trading commodities, conscripting agrarian levies, and clawing your way up to orchestrating hundreds of troops through real-time sieges and tactical engagements. If you appreciate the granular logistics of fantasy warfare—encompassing budget balancing and resource allocation—this virtual sandbox belongs in your library.

For better or worse, it closely mirrors the brutal obligations forced upon the DCC crawlers. Throughout the series, Carl must perpetually manage a chaotic assortment of eccentric inventory items, unreliable companions, volatile allies, and demanding corporate sponsors. His continued respiration depends upon it. On this specific floor, stationed across a massive funnel-shaped galactic combat zone encircling the capital city of Larracos, Carl and Donut lead their personal Princess Posse toward a prospective triumph alongside a mobilized army of non-player recruits. (Consult The Inevitable Ruin to discover how effectively they manage that monumental undertaking.)

Book 8, A Parade of Horribles: Distance

Image: Refract Studios

Where in Dungeon Crawler Carl? Floor 10 – A high-stakes vehicular death-race gauntlet

Where to play: PS4, PS5, Windows PC

Imagine this scenario: You occupy pole position at the starting line of a vehicular death-rally stretching from point A to point B. You are permitted to heavily modify your automobile and employ aggressive defensive driving maneuvers, but you must remain welded to the asphalt course regardless of how violently the track contorts around you. Oh, and you had better avoid finishing in last place at all costs. (That is precisely where the “death” element of a death-race comes into play.)

That accurate snapshot outlines the primary predicament confronting Carl upon Floor 10—and it mirrors the exact experience awaiting you within Distance, an atmospheric sci-fi horror driving game. The tracks defy conventional geometry in an Escheresque fashion, your vehicle is capable of temporary flight, you must constantly evade stray buzzsaws and laser grids, and the entire endeavor is underscored by an intensely oppressive techno score. (Granted, if you enforce strict permanent elimination rules alongside a personalized playlist, you could likely approximate a comparable level of tension via Mario Kart.)

Distance, however, infuses its racing mechanics with a slow-burn narrative terror that envelops you in mounting dread as you literally pilot your vehicle for your life, establishing it as essential reading material—er, gaming—for devotees of A Parade of Horribles.

While every title highlighted here maps neatly onto an individual Dungeon Crawler Carl level, we cannot conclude without offering a few honorable mentions for software that embodies the spirit of the franchise as a cohesive whole. Borderlands, The Outer Worlds, and Enter the Gungeon all capture that distinct corporate ethos where faceless executives grin cheerfully while you grind and expire for their key performance indicators, paired with an environment that is simultaneously absurd, side-splittingly funny, and actively trying to murder you.