19 Books Like Dungeon Crawler Carl (After Book 8)

A Parade of Horribles dropped today. If you're anything like me, you'll burn through Book 8 in a few sittings, surface for air, and immediately feel the void.

Eight books deep into Dungeon Crawler Carl and you already know what it does to you. You get attached, the dungeon takes something away, and somehow you're still laughing.

The problem with most "books like Dungeon Crawler Carl" lists is they just throw 15 titles at you and call it a day. But DCC hooks different readers for different reasons.

Some of you are here for the humor. Others want that crunchy progression system. A few of you (like me) can't get over Carl and Donut's dynamic and need another duo that hits the same way.

So here are 19 books organized by what specifically drew you to the series. Find your section, pick your next read, and thank me later.

If You Loved the Humor

DCC is funnier than almost anything else in LitRPG, and it's not close. Carl's comedy doesn't rely on reference humor or winking at the audience. These books bring that same energy.

He Who Fights with Monsters by Shirtaloon

Jason gets dropped into a fantasy world and immediately starts being a smartass about it. The humor is cleaner than DCC, and 12 books in, Jason is still getting laughs because the comedy comes from character, not gimmicks.

The power system runs on combining essences into unique confluences, so no two builds look alike. If you burned through all of DCC on audiobook, this is probably your next 250-hour commitment.

Mayor of Noobtown by Ryan Rimmel

Jim gets killed, wakes up in a game world with a shoulder demon named Shart, and has to build a town from scratch in a zone that was abandoned centuries ago. Nobody told the monsters to go easy on new players.

The humor hits the same notes as DCC, just lighter. Jim's approach to leadership is basically "fake it until everyone stops dying."

BuyMort by Damien Hanson and Joseph Phelps

Earth gets absorbed into a galactic shopping network where everything, including survival, is transactional. The MC, Tyson, starts with two dollars in his wallet and a caretaking gig at a campground in the Arizona desert.

By the end of Book 1, he's accidentally become the Warlord of Arizona through the system's own absurd logic. If you liked DCC's "the apocalypse is entertainment" angle, BuyMort takes that concept in a different but equally unhinged direction.

The Good Guys by Eric Ugland

Montana stumbled into the barbarian path by accident, and the series never lets him forget it. He's the kind of MC who ends up naked and covered in blood after every other fight because his rage abilities shred whatever he's wearing.

The humor here is more physical and situational than DCC's. Montana isn't clever like Carl. He solves problems by hitting them harder until they stop being problems, and it works way more often than it should.

Mage Tank by Cornman

Arlo gets isekai'd into a world of dungeons and stats, dumps all his points into Fortitude instead of his highest stat, and then has to figure out how to actually contribute to his party when he can barely deal damage.

His party is immediately suspicious of him because he has no armor, no weapons, and paper-thin excuses for how he got there. The first Delve is set to the highest difficulty. Sarcasm is his only survival tool.

If You Loved the Game Mechanics

DCC's leveling system, skill trees, and stat screens aren't decoration. They're load-bearing walls of the story. These books take their progression systems just as seriously.

Sufficiently Advanced Magic by Andrew Rowe

Corin enters the Serpent Spire to find his brother, who disappeared during his own climb and never came back. Instead of a combat class, Corin gets Enchanter, a crafter attunement in a tower designed to kill you.

The magic system runs on mana types, gem-based attunement ranks, and rune crafting so detailed it could be a tabletop rulebook. If you're the kind of reader who pauses to calculate whether Carl made the right stat allocation, Corin is your protagonist.

Defiance of the Fall by TheFirstDefier

The System arrives on Earth and Zac has to fight his way through a tutorial zone alone. This series is massive (16 books and counting) and Zac's dual-class system, one living and one undead, means the progression keeps forking in unexpected directions.

Where DCC gives you floor-by-floor advancement, Defiance gives you a protagonist who claws his way from nobody to cosmic-level threat through sheer persistence and smart build choices.

Primal Hunter by Zogarth

Jake wakes up in a tutorial with the rest of humanity and turns out to be absurdly talented at the new system. He min-maxes his way through the apocalypse with cold efficiency, and the system rewards him for it.

The Malefic Viper blessing gives him access to a poison-crafting path that most players would never touch, and his archery build gets increasingly absurd as the series goes on. Less funny than DCC, but if you've ever spent twenty minutes debating a skill point allocation in a game, Jake is your protagonist.

All the Skills by Honour Rae

Arthur lives in a world where magic runs on collectible skill cards, and most people are lucky to hold even one. He gets a legendary card that lets him learn skills at a terrifying pace, which is broken in exactly the way you want an MC's power to be broken.

Cards placed in your Heart Deck become part of you, and removing them is agonizing. You're constantly choosing between hoarding power and making hard build choices, and neither option feels safe. Arthur's dragon bond adds a whole second layer of loyalty and risk on top of the card system.

The Completionist Chronicles by Dakota Krout

Joe is a Ritualist who decides to complete every quest, achievement, and side objective in a game world he's permanently stuck in. The Ritualist is a hidden class that has to be practiced in secret because anyone who finds out what Joe can do will send assassins after him.

He treats it like a 100% speedrun where the run never ends, and his completionism keeps dragging him into content nobody else has touched. If you've ever cleared every room on a DCC floor just to see what's there, Joe is your spirit animal.

If You Loved Carl and Donut's Dynamic

Carl and Princess Donut shouldn't work. A snarky human paired with an increasingly terrifying cat in a death dungeon, but they grow and depend on each other in ways that sneak up on you. These books have duos that hit similarly.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

This isn't LitRPG, but the dynamic between Ryland Grace and Rocky is the closest thing in fiction to Carl and Donut's partnership. Grace can't pronounce Rocky's language and Rocky doesn't understand sarcasm, but by the halfway point they're risking their lives for each other without hesitation.

If the Carl-Donut relationship is what kept you reading DCC past midnight, start here.

Expeditionary Force by Craig Alanson

Joe Bishop and Skippy the Magnificent. A soldier and an ancient AI beer can with god-like powers and zero patience.

Skippy's personality is basically what would happen if Princess Donut were omnipotent and even more insufferable, and the back-and-forth between him and Bishop fuels a 19-book series. If you listen on audiobook, R.C. Bray's narration is on the same tier as Jeff Hays.

Threadbare by Andrew Seiple

A teddy bear comes to life and has to level up to save the little girl who loves him. The premise sounds cute. It is cute.

It's also darker than you'd expect. Threadbare can't read, can't speak, and levels up by stumbling into skills he doesn't understand. The relationship between Threadbare and his girl Celia is protective and pure in the same way Carl's instinct to keep Donut safe drives early DCC.

Cat Core by Dean Henegar

Florence Valentine, a crotchety elderly cat lady, gets killed by a delivery truck and wakes up as a dungeon core. She has no idea what that means, ignores all the advice about proper dungeon design, and fills her dungeon with cats and outdated furniture.

Florence has an AI dungeon assistant named Doug whose every recommendation she steadfastly ignores. Lighter in tone than DCC, but Florence's "more cats, fewer rules" approach to dungeon management has no business working as well as it does.

If You Loved the Dark Stakes

DCC is funny, but it's also brutal. People die. The system doesn't care.

The entertainment industry profiting from human suffering is played for horror as much as comedy. These books bring that same weight.

The Wandering Inn by pirateaba

Erin Solstice gets transported to a fantasy world and opens an inn.

The Wandering Inn is one of the longest web serials in English. That length lets pirateaba build a world where actions have permanent consequences and characters you love can die. Erin is a grandmaster-level chess player running an inn full of Antinium and Drake regulars.

This series is millions of words long. You won't run out.

How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler

Davi has died 237 times by page one. Her first act in Life 238 is to beat the wizard Tserigern to death in the pool where she keeps respawning, then go recruit the orcs she's been fighting for centuries.

The humor is pitch-black, and the loop mechanic means the stakes reset but the trauma doesn't. If you liked DCC's "find a way to laugh because the alternative is despair" energy, this book runs on the same fuel.

Azarinth Healer by Rhaegar

Ilea gets transported to a magical world and picks a healing class, then proceeds to fight like a berserker. The Azarinth Healer class is designed for unarmed close-quarters combat. She heals with one hand and breaks bones with the other, then blinks away before anything can pin her down.

The early chapters are rough around the edges (it's a web serial that started on Royal Road), but once Ilea gets her ash manipulation second class, the fights stop being survival scrambles and start being Ilea choosing what to destroy next. The world doesn't care if Ilea is ready, and she decided early on that she'd rather hit first and heal later.

If You Want More Matt Dinniman

Kaiju Battlefield Surgeon by Matt Dinniman

Dinniman's earlier novel and criminally underread. Duke, a painter still reeling from a family tragedy, accepts a commission that requires him to enter a deep-dive VR game. He gets trapped inside, and the only way out is to win.

The game's "full pain" mechanic means Duke feels everything, and Dinniman makes sure you feel it too. Duke took the commission thinking $15,000 for a mural was easy money. By hour two inside the game, easy money is the last thing on his mind.

Operation Bounce House by Matt Dinniman

Dinniman's first standalone since Kaiju and an instant New York Times bestseller. Oliver Lewis is a colonist on New Sonora who just wants to run his family's ranch and play gigs with his band.

Then gamers from Earth start trying to remotely annihilate his planet, and Oliver has to fight back with aging agriculture bots and whatever else he can scrape together. It's not LitRPG, but the same dark humor and "nobody is safe" energy runs through the whole thing.

Where to Start

If you're standing in the DCC-shaped crater and need one book right now: He Who Fights with Monsters if you want to stay in LitRPG, Project Hail Mary if you want the same emotional core in a different genre.

Both are long enough to keep you busy and land the humor-meets-stakes balance that makes DCC work. The audiobook narrators won't disappoint after Jeff Hays, either.

And if you somehow haven't read DCC yet and landed here anyway, start with Book 1. You're about to have a very good few weeks.