If You Love Dungeon Crawler Carl, You're Not Going to Be Okay for a While
If you've just finished Dungeon Crawler Carl — or, more accurately, if you've been consumed by it for the past two weeks and you're now staring at the ceiling wondering what to do with your life — you're in the right place. Matt Dinniman's chaotic, brutal, hilarious dungeon-crawling series is one of those rare reads that genuinely rewires what you want from fiction. The combination of roguelike video game logic, savage satire of reality TV culture, genuine emotional gut-punches, and the most iconic cat in literary history is, frankly, a lot to follow. So let's talk about what comes next — including the news about a live-action adaptation that has the entire LitRPG community extremely online right now.
First: What Makes Dungeon Crawler Carl So Hard to Replace?
Before we get into recommendations, it's worth being honest about why this series is difficult to match. Most LitRPG — and there's a lot of it — leans hard into the game mechanics and leaves the emotional core fairly thin. Dinniman does something different. Carl feels like a real person dropped into an absurd nightmare. Donut is genuinely funny, not just comedy-pet-funny. And underneath the relentless momentum and the increasingly unhinged boss fights, there's a story about exploitation, survival, and what it means to keep going when the game is rigged against you.
That's the bar. Here's what comes close.
Books Similar to Dungeon Crawler Carl Worth Reading Right Now
Closest Match: He Who Fights with Monsters — Jason Cheyne
If Dungeon Crawler Carl is your benchmark, He Who Fights with Monsters is the most immediate place to go. Jason Asano (the protagonist, sharing a name with the author's pen name) lands in a portal fantasy world with game mechanics baked in, and the series does something rare — it actually thinks about what having RPG stats would mean for a person's psychology and relationships. It's longer-form than Carl, slower to build, but the wit is there, the action is genuinely inventive, and by book three you'll be just as deep in as you were with Dinniman. Available on Kindle Unlimited in the UK, and the paperbacks are on Amazon UK if you prefer something physical to hold.
Second Match: Dungeon Crawler Carl Is Already on Your Shelf — But Have You Read We Are Legion (We Are Bob)?
Hear this out. We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor isn't LitRPG — it's hard sci-fi — but it shares Dungeon Crawler Carl's most important quality: a narrator who is funny, self-aware, and dealing with genuinely horrifying circumstances while refusing to stop making jokes about it. Bob Johansson dies, gets uploaded into a Von Neumann probe, and is immediately deployed into a universe that does not care about him at all. The humour is dry, the science is real, and the emotional payoff is bigger than you expect. It also happens to be one of the most-loved books by More Like This users — and for good reason. If you haven't read it yet, that's the gap to fill.
Curious what else readers who loved Project Hail Mary and We Are Legion are picking up? We've written about that too.
Wildcard: Dungeon Crawler Carl Meets Pratchett — Apocalypse Troll by David Weber
For the wildcard, go back further. The Apocalypse Troll by David Weber is older (1999) and not LitRPG at all, but it has the same energy — relentless action, a protagonist who refuses to be crushed by circumstances that should absolutely crush them, and writing that manages to be funny and tense at the same time. Weber is best known for his military sci-fi, but this standalone novel is more accessible than the Honor Harrington series and gives you that same "I can't put this down and it's 2am" feeling. Find it on eBay UK or AbeBooks for a few pounds in paperback.
The Seth MacFarlane Live-Action Series: What We Actually Know
Right. The news that a Dungeon Crawler Carl live-action TV series is in development — with Seth MacFarlane attached as a producer — has been circulating in the LitRPG community and generating a level of excitement (and anxiety) that feels entirely proportionate to how much people love these books.
Here's what's confirmed and what's still speculation, as of mid-2025:
- Seth MacFarlane's production company, Fuzzy Door Productions, acquired the rights to the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. MacFarlane is best known for Family Guy and American Dad, but his production work on The Orville — a live-action sci-fi series he created, wrote, and starred in — is probably the more relevant credit here. The Orville is funny, earnest, and takes its genre seriously. That's the version of MacFarlane that Dungeon Crawler Carl fans should be hoping shows up.
- The format is planned as live-action, not animated — which, given the visual scale of the dungeon world and the very specific charisma required to play Donut, is either the best or most terrifying decision possible depending on your outlook.
- Matt Dinniman has been publicly positive about the development, which is worth noting. Authors don't always have meaningful input into adaptations, but Dinniman's engagement with his community suggests he's keeping an eye on this.
- No network or streaming platform has been announced publicly yet. Given MacFarlane's existing relationship with Amazon Prime (The Orville moved there for its third season), that's one to watch — but nothing is confirmed.
- Casting is not announced. Do not trust any social media posts claiming otherwise. The internet is chaotic.
Should You Be Excited or Worried?
Honestly? Both, in roughly equal measure, which is probably the healthy response. The source material is genuinely difficult to adapt — the internal monologue is half the book, the game mechanics need to be shown rather than explained, and Donut is a character that could very easily become insufferable in the wrong hands. But MacFarlane's track record on The Orville — a show that started as a parody and became one of the most earnest science fiction series on television — is genuinely encouraging. He clearly has affection for the genres he works in.
The thing that matters most is budget and creative control. The dungeon world of Dungeon Crawler Carl is enormous, weird, and expensive-looking. If this gets the resources it needs and the writing room actually understands why people love the books, there's real potential here. If it gets compressed into a procedurally generic fantasy action show with the LitRPG elements sanded off, it'll be a disappointing footnote.
For now, the books remain the definitive version. Go read them if you haven't finished the series. Then come back and we'll all wait together.
Find Your Next Read the Easy Way
If you're the kind of reader who finishes a series and immediately needs to know what's next, More Like This was built exactly for that moment. Type in "Dungeon Crawler Carl" — or any book, series, or author you love — and the AI searches in real time to return three curated recommendations: the closest match, a well-matched alternative, and a wildcard you probably haven't heard of yet. No algorithm trying to sell you something. Just honest suggestions from a tool that actually reads the room.
It works across books, whisky, fragrance, coffee, wine, and more. But for readers mid-withdrawal from a series they love, it's particularly useful.
Want to know how the AI actually makes those calls? Here's how More Like This finds book alternatives — and why it works better than a Reddit thread at 1am.
The Short Version
- Books to read next: He Who Fights with Monsters (closest LitRPG match), We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (for the humour and heart), The Apocalypse Troll (wildcard with the same energy).
- The TV series: Seth MacFarlane's Fuzzy Door Productions has the rights. Live-action. No platform, no cast, no release date confirmed yet. Cautious optimism is warranted.
- What to do right now: Start He Who Fights with Monsters, and check back here when the casting news drops.