Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

It’s definitely pulp, but is it fiction? McLuhan would have a heart attack. Am I listening to a game? Am I playing a book? Dinniman bizarrely splices a traditional narrative with literal video game interfaces. While entertaining, it feels like cheating because it borrows the dopamine loops of a different medium rather than offering literary depth. But underneath the veneer of juvenile humor, the…