Someone has the license for the popular LitRPG franchise Dungeon Crawler Carl, but we probably won't see it for a year or more.
During a book tour stop in Austin, Texas for his latest book Operation Bounce House, Dungeon Crawler Carl author Matt Dinniman casually dropped what might be the most unexpected piece of IP news in pinball this year. After rattling off the usual list of DCC adaptations in the works — a graphic novel, tabletop RPG, Playmates action figures — Dinniman added: "And there's a pinball machine that's being made."
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Book Tour Interview with Matt Dinniman, author of Operation Bounce House
The crowd reacted about how you'd expect. One of the interviewers on stage from the Hello Crawlers podcast responded with a flat "No," seemingly caught completely off guard. "The last thing I was expecting was for you to be like, oh, and now we're in pinball," he said. "You're talking about books, games, toys... pinball."
He confirmed that Jeff Hays, the audiobook narrator who has become nearly as synonymous with the series as the books themselves, is providing voices for the machine. He also mentioned that his agent was frustrated because Dinniman's first instinct was to forego any licensing fee and just ask for one of the machines. Hays, for his part, reportedly said the same thing. It's a funny detail, but read it again: there's an agent involved, a licensing fee being negotiated, and voice work already underway. This isn't a homebrew project. A real manufacturer is making this game.
No manufacturer was named, and Dinniman estimated the machine is likely over a year out. He teased additional stuff in the pipeline he can't talk about yet, though he clarified that a video game is not currently in active development.
This tip comes to us from Rebecca Salam (Fliptronic), who attended the event and passed along the word.
Back It Up — Dungeon Crawler Who?
Fair question. Dungeon Crawler Carl is a franchise that has only popped up a few times in our Hype Index tracking — I temporarily have it artificially boosted so users can vote on it themselves. But in the broader entertainment world, DCC is having a moment.
The series started as a self-published web serial on Royal Road in 2019. Written by Matt Dinniman, it follows a sarcastic Coast Guard veteran named Carl and a talking, egomaniacal cat named Princess Donut as they navigate an alien-run death-game dungeon that's broadcast as intergalactic reality TV. Think Douglas Adams — the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy guy — meets a dungeon crawl, with the satire dialed up and the stakes very real.
Since then, it's sold over 6 million copies across seven books. Dinniman signed a print-only deal with Ace Books (Penguin Random House) in 2024 — making DCC the first pure LitRPG title acquired by a Big Five publisher — while retaining his ebook and audiobook rights. The audiobooks, narrated by Jeff Hays of Soundbooth Theater, account for the majority of the series' sales. Dinniman himself has said audiobook revenue surpasses physical and ebook sales combined.
The licensing portfolio has expanded rapidly:
Television: Universal International Studios and Seth MacFarlane's Fuzzy Door Productions acquired live-action TV rights in a competitive bidding situation. Christopher Yost (Thor: Ragnarok, The Mandalorian) is attached to write.
Toys: Playmates Toys debuted a full product line at New York Toy Fair 2026 — action figures, blind-box diorama statues, mystery loot boxes, and Princess Donut plush.
Tabletop: Renegade Game Studios is developing a full tabletop RPG and a solo/co-op deck-building card game, launching via BackerKit.
Comics: A graphic novel campaign on BackerKit raised over $2.3 million from 23,000+ backers — one of the top four highest-grossing comic crowdfunding campaigns ever.
It's been profiled in the Wall Street Journal, Slate, and Publishers Weekly. Books-A-Million named Book 1 its inaugural Book of the Year in 2025, and the series has hit the New York Times Bestseller list in multiple categories.
Maximum Orbit controls the global merchandise licensing rights. Notably, Renegade Game Studios — the tabletop partner — also has licensing ties to Transformers and G.I. Joe, two properties that regularly appear near the top of our Hype Index theme requests.
All of which is to say: this is not a niche property anymore. It's a franchise on a genuine growth trajectory, and someone in pinball has the license.
The Pinball Angle
On its face, Dungeon Crawler Carl is a bit of an odd choice for a pinball theme. The series is barely five years old. It doesn't target nostalgia at all — there's no generation that grew up with it, no childhood memory to activate. That's the playbook for most licensed pinball machines, and DCC doesn't fit it.
But look at it from another angle. This is franchise IP that's popular with key pieces of the pinball demographic right now. The fan community lives on places like Reddit, Discord, and YouTube — the same places many pinball players and buyers spend their time. It's a series built on gaming mechanics, dark humor, and genre-fiction sensibilities that overlap with the kind of people who already own pinball machines. And the audience is still growing. A TV show could blow the doors off.
A smart manufacturer could grab the rights while they're still relatively affordable and ride that wave into a potentially new but relevant audience for pinball. You don't often get the chance to license a franchise that's on the way up rather than coasting on nostalgia.
So Who's Making It?
Dinniman didn't say. But the field of plausible candidates narrows pretty quickly.
Stern and Jersey Jack are out. This is too new and too risky for what they normally take on. Neither company is going to commit a production slot to a property that most of their existing customer base hasn't heard of yet, no matter how fast it's growing. I don't think it would be any of the European manufacturers either. And who knows what CGC is up to.
American Pinball is a dark horse candidate, but it's still too early in their renewal cycle to tackle something this unconventional. I'm not sure this is a property that would be on Spooky's radar — they tend to focus more on horror and horror-adjacent nostalgia properties, and the timeline doesn't quite fit.
That pretty much leaves Barrels of Fun, Multimorphic, and Turner Pinball. Given the source material — which features a sarcastic, trash-talking protagonist navigating violent alien death games — and Turner's focus on family-friendly games, I don't think it'd be them either.
So that leaves Barrels of Fun or Multimorphic. My guess is Barrels.
Here's why: this could easily make sense as one of their limited-run games, similar to the 525-unit run of Winchester Mystery House. Barrels has shown a strong instinct for thematic integration and world-building — the kind of immersive, detail-oriented approach that DCC's source material is practically made for.
If you put someone like Karl DeAngelo at the helm, who showed exactly that vision with Winchester, a 500-unit run of a Dungeon Crawler Carl machine could sell through. The franchise has an engaged fanbase that buys things, and Barrels has a growing reputation in the boutique space. That's a match.
I don't have confirmation on any of this. It's speculation based on the field of plausible manufacturers and the nature of the IP. But if someone's building a DCC pinball machine and they're not one of the majors, Barrels of Fun is the most logical landing spot.
Wherever it lands, I hope Dinniman's agent got him more than just the machine.
Colin is the chief pixel pusher at Kineticist. He's a lifetime gamer who became enamored with pinball after taking in a family copy of the 1979 classic Joker Poker (the EM version). Since then he's bought, sold and repaired many machines, competed in all kinds of tournaments, and contributes to This Week in Pinball, the New England Pinball League, and Pin-Masters of New England. Previously, Colin spent over a decade working in marketing for agencies and tech startups. He also started and ran a music blog, happy hour website, and wrote a regular craft beer review column for Central Track in Dallas. Once aspired to be an artsy film director.
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