8 Games Like Dungeon Crawler Carl to Play Next

8 Games to Play After Dungeon Crawler Carl

Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl begins with Carl, a Coast Guard veteran, stranded outside in the middle of winter after every human-made building on Earth collapses. His only nearby companion is Princess Donut, a talking cat. Together, they are forced into an 18-level dungeon built on their ruined planet for an alien corporation’s reality show, Dungeon Crawler World.

Every floor changes the rules. Carl and Donut must improvise, fight, manage resources and survive increasingly strange threats while an audience—and a sarcastic dungeon AI—watches. These eight games capture particular floors, systems or moods from the first eight published books.

Spoiler warning: The recommendations below contain minor spoilers for the main themes of the first eight Dungeon Crawler Carl books.

1. Lethal Company — Books 1 and 2

Carl has a fluffy white cat named Princess Donut on his shoulder as he runs from an explosion on the cover of the graphic novel version of Dungeon Crawler Carl

Matches: Floors 1 and 2, the tutorial levels
Platforms: Windows PC

Lethal Company places a team of unnamed employees on abandoned moons, scavenging scrap to meet a corporation’s profit targets. The work is cooperative, dangerous and often absurdly funny, but small errors can lead to grotesque consequences. That combination of corporate indifference, improvised teamwork and jokes made under extreme pressure makes it a strong match for Carl and Donut’s introduction.

Like the early dungeon floors, the game treats onboarding and survival as the same process. You learn quickly, take risks and hope the company’s balance sheet is improved before something in the darkness finds you.

2. Baldur’s Gate 3 — Book 2

Matches: Floor 3, the Over City
Platforms: PS5, Windows PC and Xbox Series X

The Over City is a sprawling ruined metropolis filled with side quests, busy NPCs, shops, taverns and distractions. The third act of Baldur’s Gate 3, which opens up the city of Baldur’s Gate, creates a similar sense of possibility and overload. There is always another lead to follow, character to meet or problem to investigate.

The comparison also suits the book’s class and race changes. Baldur’s Gate 3 offers the kind of detailed character creation that lets you fully commit to a new identity after the rules change.

New to large role-playing games? Our arcade machine buying guide has useful advice about choosing a gaming setup, even if your next adventure is on a modern console.

3. Antichamber — Book 3

Image of a major city in Baldur’s Gate 3. A large domed building sits in the middle of the town which has a Florence Italy influence.

Matches: Floor 4, the Iron Tangle
Platform: Windows PC

The subway network in The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook is deliberately difficult to map. Routes twist, directions become unreliable and the crawlers must deal with monster-filled trains. Antichamber delivers a similarly disorientating challenge through an exploration maze inspired by the impossible geometry of M.C. Escher.

Corridors can loop back on themselves, rooms may change between visits and a special gun can create, alter or destroy matter. It is a compact puzzle game built around the same feeling that the dungeon’s geography is actively working against you.

4. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom — Book 4

Matches: Floor 5, Hump Town and its biome-themed bubbles
Platform: Switch

Hump Town is a desert settlement surrounded by sealed regions based around land, sea, air and subterranean environments. To reach the next level, the crawlers must conquer each biome in a series of castle-like challenges.

Tears of the Kingdom offers a comparable tour through watery, volcanic, tomb-like and wintry environments before the journey reaches Hyrule Castle. The parallel is not exact—Nintendo’s adventure does not feature a razor-toothed feral goose boss named Denise—but both games use contrasting regions to make a larger quest feel varied.

5. Predator: Hunting Grounds — Book 5

Matches: Floor 6, the Hunting Grounds
Platforms: PS4, PS5, Windows PC and Xbox Series X

The Butcher’s Masquerade turns a huge jungle into a hunting spectacle, with wealthy aliens paying for the chance to pursue and kill crawlers. Predator: Hunting Grounds reverses the perspective slightly: a squad of elite soldiers attempts routine military objectives while an alien Predator stalks the same jungle map.

The fireteam has weapons and defensive tactics, but the Predator has a plasma cannon and one clear objective. Escape the jungle and your squad survives; get caught, and you become the trophy. That predator-versus-prey structure makes this the closest match for the book’s violent hunting scenario.

If light-gun games appeal to you, browse RETROCADE’s collection of arcade light guns for another way to enjoy shooting-game action.

6. Inscryption — Books 6 and 7

character shot of Marshawn Lynch with a rocket launcher for Predator: Hunting Grounds

Matches: Floors 7 and 8, the fairytale maze and Ghosts of Earth
Platforms: Switch, PS4, PS5, Windows PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X

Floor 7 is skipped after Prepotente, an Italian Boer goat crawler, destroys it. Floor 8 recreates Havana, Cuba, but its familiar streets are populated by memory ghosts. The crawlers hunt monsters and turn them into battle cards, giving the setting a creature-collecting flavour with a much darker edge.

Inscryption is the better match for the psychological horror. Its roguelike deck-building, unsettling characters, changing visual styles and escape-room elements create a similarly hostile game within a game. Sacrificing weaker cards—such as squirrels—to play stronger ones also reflects the books’ harsh survival logic.

For the doomed fairytale atmosphere of the skipped floor, try Slay the Princess. Its repeated deaths and impossible maze are tragic, but its presentation is striking.

7. Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord — Book 7

Matches: Floor 9, the Faction Wars
Platforms: PS4, PS5, Windows PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X

Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord begins with a nobody and gradually turns that character into the leader of a substantial army. Trade goods, recruit peasants and build influence before commanding hundreds of troops in real-time battles and sieges.

Its appeal is as much logistical as tactical. Budgets, resources, companions and allies all matter, much as Carl must manage strange items, sponsors and a growing group of supporters. The ninth floor’s funnel-shaped battlefield around Larracos and the Princess Posse’s campaign therefore feel naturally suited to Bannerlord’s large-scale warfare.

8. Distance — Book 8

Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord - loading screen art of a general standing before his assembled army

Matches: Floor 10, the death-race gauntlet
Platforms: PS4, PS5 and Windows PC

Floor 10 puts its competitors in a race where reaching the finish is not enough: stay on the track, avoid its hazards and do not come last. Distance, a 2012 driving sci-fi horror game, turns that premise into a series of Escher-like courses filled with sawblades, lasers and sections where the car can fly.

The pounding techno soundtrack supplies constant pressure, while an understated horror story gradually develops in the background. That combination of vehicular skill, lethal course design and creeping dread makes Distance an especially fitting choice for readers of A Parade of Horribles.

More games with the same chaotic spirit

For the broader tone of Dungeon Crawler Carl, consider Borderlands, The Outer Worlds and Enter the Gungeon. All three combine dangerous environments with absurd humour and powerful organisations that treat people as numbers in a performance report.