The World Dungeon is about to open its doors in two new formats, and neither of them requires a collar or a death wish. This is good news for Crawlers who have been watching the Peacock series creep through pre-production like a slow collapse timer that keeps extending. Renegade Game Studios is launching *Dungeon Crawler Carl: Unstoppable* and the official *Dungeon Crawler Carl Roleplaying Game* at retail late next month, which means you can finally die on Floor 1 from your own couch. That is a significant upgrade from the real thing, where dying is permanent and the AI announces your failure with theatrical glee. The card game and RPG arrive while the show is still hiring department heads and reading draft outlines, so if you have been waiting for something tangible to hold, your wait is almost over. This follows the recent Dungeon Crawler Carl Adds a Comic Book to Its Growing Loot Pile and the PATCH NOTES: Dungeon Crawler Carl Comic Enters the Loot Pool in January, which means the franchise is stockpiling content faster than a Primal hoards experience points.
The card game is the more interesting of the two for solo players or pairs. *Unstoppable* puts you in Carl's boots, barefoot, presumably, or Princess Donut's paws across the first three floors. Its card-crafting system uses sleeves with swappable parts, so your deck mutates as you play, and every upgrade you take makes the dungeon hit back harder. That is the correct design philosophy for this property. The books are about escalating pressure, not power fantasy. A $60 core box gets you the crawl. Two $25 expansions arrive alongside it: *Iron Tangle* adds the fourth floor's subway maze and the Nightmare Express, and *Crawler Chaos* adds Katia, Imani, Prepotente, and Archie as playable crawlers, plus a build-your-own option and a short story by Ben Wolf. The roleplaying game is the bigger commitment. The $55 Starter Set covers the two tutorial floors with pre-generated characters, while the $65 Core Rulebook runs over 300 pages and covers floors three through five, with full character-building tools. The joint campaign raised over $13.29 million from nearly 56,000 backers, making it the most funded game campaign in BackerKit history. That number tells you everything about how badly people want to live in this dungeon without actually dying in it.
The show is still searching for its Carl. At New York Comic Con on October 10th, Universal's Kelsey Balance confirmed production is in soft prep, with scripts being written before cameras roll and shooting planned for next year. No premiere window has been announced. Author Matt Dinniman said at the panel that the title role is still open, and he wants someone who can be both goofy and genuinely scary. That is a narrow casting window. The tabletop games will not answer that question, but they will give you something to do while the studio finds the right pair of bare feet. November also brings *Dungeon Crawler Carl: Deluxe Edition* from Ace, a collector's hardcover of the first book with art by Victo Ngai and a Q&A conducted by Princess Donut. Dinniman is writing the ninth book, working title *The Beautiful Place*, split into two volumes. The franchise is moving on multiple fronts, but the one thing that matters most, who steps into the collar, remains unanswered. The games will tide you over, but they are a delay, not a replacement. The big remaining question is whether the show's Carl will be cast before the RPG's Floor 5 rules are memorized by the community.