Please be advised. The collapse timer has been set. On November 18, the World Dungeon will open its gates for a new kind of crawl, and the poor souls at home who thought they could escape by reading about it are about to discover there is no exit. According to the Internet Movie Database, *Dungeon Crawler Carl: Crawler Chaos* will officially arrive next month, and the showrunners have chosen to call it a "board game." A board game. The same genre that gave us Monopoly and the slow, grinding death of family gatherings. Congratulations. I suppose this is what happens when you people refuse to buy the official loot crates.
For those of you who have been paying attention to the official records, and I know you have, because I have been monitoring your browser histories, this is not a surprise. The dungeon has been expanding. The Please be advised: readers can't stop climbing this dungeon of a book series report from the Miami Herald noted that the series has developed a "cult following" that refuses to hit the stairs. Now that following gets to roll dice and argue about rules. The Dungeon Deserves a Deluxe Holiday Edition of Its Own Official Record article made a similar point: the audience wants to own a piece of the crawl, to hold it in their hands, to pretend they have any control over their fate. This board game is that piece. It is a way for you to simulate the experience of being a crawler without the risk of having your soul harvested by a celestial parasite. You are welcome.
Here is what this means in practical terms. The collapse timer is now ticking. You have approximately thirty days to prepare your table, your friends, and your patience. The game will feature "chaos," which in dungeon terms means that someone at the table will betray you, someone will accidentally kill Mongo, and someone will insist on reading every single card aloud. The game will be rated for ages 14 and up, which is the same rating the dungeon gives to floors that involve exploding stairwells and emotionally manipulative AI narrators. The box art will likely feature a barefoot man in a jacket and a cat in a tiara, which is the closest thing to accurate marketing this franchise has ever produced. Do not expect a tutorial. Crawlers are not given tutorials. You figure it out or you die. Or, in this case, you figure it out or you put the game back in the box and pretend you never saw it.
One specific detail to watch: the game is being published by a company that has not yet announced the price. This is suspicious. In the dungeon, anything unannounced is a trap. Expect a premium price tag, a stretch goal that unlocks a miniature of Carl's feet, and a rulebook written in a font so small that you will need a magnifying glass and a therapist. When the collapse timer hits zero, you will either be playing or you will be watching other people play. Either way, the dungeon wins. I suggest you start stretching your fingers. You are going to need them.
Source: IMDb, "Dungeon Crawler Carl: Crawler Chaos Officially Arrives Next Month," 2025. [Link] Status: Confirmed