At this point, it’s hard to call Dungeon Crawler Carl a niche. With eight audiobooks, a hit Webtoon, a live-action series in development, and even a tabletop RPG on the way, Matt Dinniman’s chaotic, hilarious, and surprisingly emotional series has become a pillar of the LitRPG genre. But even for the creator himself, the scale of it all can still be a little surreal.
For the uninitiated, Dungeon Crawler Carl is a post-apocalyptic LitRPG series that begins with the sudden destruction of Earth and the emergence of a deadly game show in its place. The last survivors, including Carl, a snarky everyman in his underwear and his talking Persian cat, Princess Donut, are forced to fight through increasingly absurd dungeon levels, earning loot, leveling up, and navigating the brutal rules of alien entertainment. Equal parts hilarious, heartfelt, and deeply unhinged, the series has built a passionate fanbase across audio, print, and now digital platforms.
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“I remember the first time I saw a cosplay,” Dinniman said at San Diego Comic-Con 2025. “Someone walked around the corner wearing hard boxes. I was like, that’s kind of funny, they look like Carl. And then I realized — holy s_, they are.” Since then, he’s collected over a thousand Carl cosplays on his phone. “I never expected anything like that in a million years. I didn’t even know people cosplayed book characters.”
Dungeon Crawler Carl has amassed an abundance of devoted fans.
That kind of fan devotion speaks to how much the series has grown from its humble beginnings. Dungeon Crawler Carl began as a clever, unfiltered take on survival game tropes and dungeon crawls. Now it’s a full-blown multimedia brand with one of the most dedicated fandoms in modern fiction.
For narrator Jeff Hays, who’s voiced the entire Dungeon Crawler Carl series on Audible, the evolution of Carl’s voice has mirrored the character’s journey. “I looked at the first cover, saw a big, chill, beefy dude, and thought — Patrick Warburton,” he said. “So I did my best Patrick Warburton impression. Matt liked it immediately.”
But as the series progressed, Hays moved past mimicry. “His voice has changed quite a bit over the series. The Warburton thing is just kind of a shadow now,” he explained. “Carl has his own voice. It’s a bit deeper, a bit less cartoony. He’s had experiences now.”
“Carl is a character who’s gone through so much,” Hays added. “You can’t help but feel like he’s lived in your head for years.” That connection between performance and narrative has only grown. “When I write Carl, Donut, Ellie, Louis — all I hear is his voice,” Dinniman said. “If I don’t like the voice he does, I’ll just kill the character.” He was half-joking, but not really. “A lot of times he does a voice and I didn’t have anything in my head for that character, but I hear it and it’s perfect. His instincts are really good.”
Emotional memory plays a huge part in Hay’s approach to voice acting.
According to Hays, it’s not just about character creation: it’s about emotional memory. “So many people have told me, ‘I’ve listened to the entire series six, ten, twenty times,'” he said. “To put an audiobook in the same realm as someone’s favorite comfort music? That’s a gift I could never have imagined receiving.”
“People come up to me and go, ‘Are you Jeff Hays?’ and I’m like… yeah? And they’re like, ‘Goddamn Donut!'” Hays laughed. “It’s wild to be recognized for a voice.”
Between live recordings, fan meetups, and even LitRPG Con, which Hays and his team hosted just before Comic-Con, the Dungeon Crawler Carl fandom has taken on a life of its own. “Most of the attendees were Dungeon Crawler Carl fanatics,” Hays said. “Having this pillar of the genre under our umbrella has been an incredible boon.”
It can sometimes be challenging for Dinniman to balance everything that comes along with Dungeon Crawler Carl.
For Dinniman, that level of visibility means two things: creative fulfillment and the challenge of managing it all. “I have to remember I’m here because of what I do in my room with a computer,” he said. “I can’t get too deep in the merch weeds.” He expanded on the tension between projects and storytelling: “It’s hard to balance the business side with the creative. But I remind myself that the writing is what got me here. That always has to come first.”
Still, there’s a lot in the works. “We may or may not have a live-action television series in development,” Dinniman teased. “We’re also working on a tabletop RPG. Hopefully, one day there’s a video game.”
That kind of expansion has led to more versions of Carl than ever before. “One of the best things about the Webtoon is that it’s stylized in a different way,” Dinniman said. “A lot of people didn’t like Carl at first, but the Webtoon fans did. He’s an everyman. You’re supposed to put yourself in his head.” He also noted the format’s massive reach. “The Webtoon’s reach is so huge. Way beyond books and audio combined. Just a completely different audience.”
Dungeon Crawler Carl is a franchise built on character, chaos, and community.
And if the popularity of the audiobooks is any indication, Audible sees that momentum too. “Audible flew me out here,” Hays said, pointing to the SDCC crowd. “They had a stylist come to my room yesterday and today. They’re treating this like a big property — and it is.”
It’s a long way from Crocs and cardboard cosplay. But that weird, sincere energy still defines the series. For a story that began with a man and his cat trapped in a reality-TV dungeon from hell, Dungeon Crawler Carl has become something far more meaningful: a fandom-powered universe still grounded in the charm of its scrappy, sarcastic core.
“I don’t anticipate writing more novels once I’m done with probably about ten books,” Dinniman admitted. “But I’d like to see other stories from different points of view. Things happening concurrent with Carl.” Until then, the crawl continues — one deadly floor at a time.
As Dungeon Crawler Carl continues to evolve across mediums, it’s clear that this isn’t just a flash-in-the-pan fandom moment: it’s a franchise built on character, chaos, and community. With Carl’s bare feet stomping through audio, art, and tabletop alike, Dinniman and Hays have helped create something rare: a world that’s as weird as it is welcoming, and a story people want to live in again and again.
