The Problem With Dungeon Crawler Carl

Tue, 05 May 2026 14:57:43 -0400

There is a lot of hype around Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman, and I’ve always wondered why. I knew from the summary that it was LitRPG, and those are hardly ever “mainstream.” I’ll be honest and say that I was never really won over by the hype or the concept of the books themselves, despite having a soft spot for LitRPG novels. I just couldn’t really get myself that excited about a man and his cat going dungeon crawling. Add in that there was some odd rumblings online about there being some sort of romance between the MC and the cat. Those are false, thankfully, but honestly at this point I’d kind of be happy if those rumors had been true.

Not that I’m professing any sort of interest in man on cat kinkiness, but it would at least be something interesting. I’m now in the third book, and I’ve honestly never been so bored. Don’t get me wrong, there are some parts that are interesting and action packed (just enough to have gotten me to the third book). But, it’s just so boring.

Let’s break this down into my two main complaints.

First, there are no consequences. We know that Carl (the male MC) and Princess Donut (the cat MC) aren’t going to die. At least not in these early books. And because of the game’s mechanics, they heal from every injury instantaneously. There’s no drama or worry that an injury might actually effect them long term. They take a potion or cast a spell and then they carry on.

At the beginning, there was some worry that Carl’s lack of pants and shoes (yes, he’s in his boxers without shoes when the game starts), would effect him. But the game made that a benefit so fast that by the time I got through the first half of book one, that was completely solved. In fact, now if Carl put on pants and shoes, he’d be weaker than he is without them.

Now, this isn’t unusual for a LitRPG. Most have fast healing mechanics. Usually, the way other novels get around this is for there to be other characters that may actually face consequences.

And this ties into my second problem with the series so far: there are no other characters. Oh, there are other people, but nobody that is truly close to the two MCs. We have Mordecai, their manager and we have the fairly new Katia. Mordecai is a part of the game, and is mostly a non-factor outside of helping them with the game. We get no real sense that he really cares about Carl or Donut. Maybe he does, but it just isn’t shown.

Katia is a new addition to their party, and I had some hope that she’d add some dimension to the gameplay and actually make me care about another character. But so far, she’s distant, not a good game player, and has about a 90% chance of betraying Carl sometime in the future (and Carl knows this, so it makes it even harder for the three players to get closer together).

Without other characters to care about, all we really get is Carl and Donut moving from one battle to another. After awhile, they’re all the same. Carl blows something up, Donut shoots some magic missiles, and they grab the loot once they leave. Even Dinnimon has gotten bored with the loot system since mostly now any minor items are in a “and we got a bunch of other stuff” dump.

So, if the battles are boring and there are no consequences to the outcome to those battles, it makes it hard to stay engaged. Add in the lack of other characters to get attached to, and the first two books just become a slog to get through at times. The end of book 2 was good enough for me to pick up book 3, but only just. I’m really hoping that the “it gets better as the series goes along” thing happens soon. All of the fans of this series, of which there are many, tell me that it gets way, way better.

I just hope that happens soon. Because I do want to like this series. I do like Carl and Donut. Their partnership is adorable and there are some really touching moments between them (thankfully totally platonic, lol). I want them to succeed and beat down the actual bad guys. I also like how at times the author makes us feel bad for the monsters who are really just pawns being played by this massive corporation. But the “BIG BAD GUYS” plotline that we get told about is sprinkled about so sparsely, it’s hard to care that much about it when it’s not right in front of your face.

I’m going to make it through the third book. It’s more of a chance than I’d usually give a series that has this many problems, but the Internet hype has given me hope. But I doubt that it gets a fourth chance unless something changes. Maybe Katia gets a bigger role and she forms an attachment with Carl and Donut. Maybe we will be introduced to some other characters that actually matter. Or we won’t and this book will be like the other two. In which case it will be time for me to move on, as sad as that will be.

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The Problem With Dungeon Crawler Carl