Matt Dinniman’s The Gate of the Feral Gods is the fourth installment in the Dungeon Crawler Carl dark comedy series. The saga begins when a corporate alien syndicate called the Borant Corporation demolishes Earth to make way for a new season of Dungeon Crawler World, the galaxy’s most popular and lethal reality game show. The few million human survivors, including ex-Coast Guardsman Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s prize-winning cat, Princess Donut, are forced to descend through 18 dungeon floors, each a uniquely dangerous environment. If the humans win the game show, they can “reclaim” Earth. Over the course of the first three books, Carl and Donut navigate four levels, including a goblin-infested kingdom, a monster-run casino city, and a sky-world of floating islands. Along the way, they accumulate skills, magical items, and a dedicated following of intergalactic viewers. They also gather a small group of allies, including the shapeshifting doppelganger Katia and the former dungeon manager Mordecai.

Much of the advancement for the narrative or characters comes in the form of traditional video game achievements, items, inventory increases, spells, and “stat buffs,” which are unique increases to a character’s abilities. For example, the cat Princess Donut gains the ability to speak and acts as a sentient central character. The characters also choose their “class,” with each class having a broadly similar collection of attributes and skills; a “race,” referring to the hundreds of fictional races existing in this sci-fi universe; and a “level,” an indicator of strength or skill that can be upgraded throughout the dungeon.

The group also fights bosses and interacts with NPCs, or non-playable characters, referring to characters that players cannot play as in games. An AI entity called System AI interacts with the characters as needed to offer information on the game show or award stat buffs, and a popular intergalactic talk show host named Odette frequently acts as a platform for the central characters to present themselves to the audience. In each installment, they also interact with or battle other “crawlers” navigating the dungeons. In The Gate of the Feral Gods, they enter the fifth floor, where the challenges become more complex and their insurgency escalates, forcing them to coordinate with other crawlers to survive a new, multi-zoned environment.