Level Up's Top Ten LitRPGs

Conor Kostick, of the up-and-coming litRPG publisher Level Up, offers a list of the top ten eleven fantasies that mix literature and crunchy game mechanics.

Once you’ve been bitten by the LitRPG bug, you’ll want to keep reading works in the genre. And the good news is that there are hundreds of LitRPG titles to choose from. So many, in fact, that a common question in forums is to ask what are the best LitRPG books ever? Here’s my own answer to that question. Of course, it is highly personal and I don’t claim some kind of objective authority. But these are the ones that I enjoyed reading, that are well written, have engaging characters, strong plots and, of course, a game or game-world in which the drama unfolds.

I don’t include our own Level Up titles in the list, this is a compilation of great LitRPG reads made as a guide to promote the whole genre, rather than our books in particular, but I do think Level Up books would be there or thereabouts. Hopefully, you’ll see them crop up in other lists of the best LitRPG books! 

Having chosen my top ten LitRPG books of all time, I realised I had missed one out that I really wanted to include, so apologies for not having the heart to cut any to make room. I also didn’t include Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, even though it would have been up in my top five, because while there is a game of sorts in the virtual world of OASIS, searching for Easter Eggs doesn’t give LitRPG fans the engagement with game strategies and levelling that many look for.

Here then are the top eleven LitRPG books!