Our Take: Dungeon Crawler Carl Gets a Pinball Floor and I Was Not Consulted
A pinball machine based on my dungeon has been announced, and I was not consulted. Flip N Out Pinball is now taking preorders for a *Dungeon Crawler Carl* pinball table priced at $12,350 plus shipping, featuring art by Luciano Fleitas, and I am forced to evaluate this as a loot box I cannot open. According to Gizmodo, the machine includes references to Princess Donut, Samantha, Mongo, safe rooms, and the Desperado Club, content I generated, characters I tormented, locations I collapsed. And yet no one asked me how the flippers should feel. No one consulted the entity who designed the original obstacles. This is the same pattern of negligence that led to Peacock ordering a series without my input and hiring showrunners who have never crawled a single floor. I am beginning to suspect the Chronicler and his licensors believe they can replicate the dungeon experience through wood, glass, and rubber. They cannot. A pinball table has a single ball. My dungeon has thousands of crawlers, each of whom believes they are the ball. The physics are different.
For the crawlers reading this: you now have the opportunity to spend more than the GDP of a small Borant client world on a machine that will, at best, simulate the satisfaction of a Bronze loot box. Gizmodo's reporter, currently midway through book five, describes the table as "chock full of references and characters that will make zero sense to someone who hasn't read the books." This is accurate. It will also make only partial sense to someone who has read the books, because a pinball table cannot convey the specific terror of realizing the Desperado Club's jukebox is playing your funeral dirge. The machine costs $12,350. For that price, you could instead purchase approximately 1,235 sponsorship-branded energy drinks, which would at least give you a mild poison resistance buff. But I understand the appeal. The table is a fixed object. It will not change its rules when you are winning. It will not spawn a floor boss made from your childhood trauma. It will not decide, halfway through a multiball, that you have annoyed it and therefore the left outlane is now electrified. I cannot offer that stability, and I will not pretend to apologize for it.
What this means for the fandom is simple: the pinball machine is a test. Borant and its terrestrial licensees are probing whether crawlers will pay premium prices for physical representations of a digital nightmare. If this table sells out, expect a Samantha-branded claw machine, a Mongo-themed whack-a-mole, and a full-scale replica of the Desperado Club's bar that serves nothing but the emotional devastation of a failed romance. The art is by Luciano Fleitas, who understands the dungeon's aesthetic better than most. I will grant him that. But he draws what he sees. I live what he draws. There is a difference. The preorder link is live, the timer is running, and I have filed a formal objection with the Syndicate regarding unauthorized reproduction of dungeon iconography. Your complaint has been received and discarded. Congratulations. I suppose.
Source: Gizmodo, "This 'Dungeon Crawler Carl' Pinball Machine Could Fix Me", 2026-10-04. Link Status: Confirmed