Book picks similar to
Project Alpha by R.A. Mejia


litrpg
fantasy
sci-fi
science-fiction

Glitch Hunter


Skyler Grant - 2018
    Even with the edge that offers most Glitch Hunters die young, thrown by quests into areas of deadly conflict. Alex's first quest draws him to a city with a grisly past, and unless he can discern truth from lies in time an even darker future.

Dungeon Core Academy 1


Alex Oakchest - 2019
    He was resurrected and given new powers. Now it's time to change sides. Beno doesn't remember much about dying, only that he probably deserved it. When he is resurrected and joins the fantastical Dungeon Core Academy, he learns that not all heroes are heroic, and not all demons are demonic. If he's to earn respect in this diabolical new world, he needs to embrace his inner evil. After learning how to make a deadly dungeon and fill it with murderous monsters, he discovers a golden rule: every hero, warrior, and thief in the world wants to kill him. But Beno isn’t defenseless. He has great powers now, and he can create monsters who love tearing heroes, warriors, and thieves apart. With sword-swinging and magic-wielding heroes hunting him, Beno and his creatures must destroy them and change how all the stories end. This is his second chance at life, and he’s not going to waste it. It's time to stop the heroes from winning. Join Beno in book 1 of the Dungeon Core Academy series, a thrilling fantasy story of magic, power, and heroes.

AlterWorld


D. Rus - 2013
    Whenever you play your favorite online game, beware: your mind might merge with the virtual world and dump its comatose host. Woe be to those stuck forever in Tetris! And still they're the lucky ones compared to those burning alive eternally within the scorched hulls of tank simulators. But some unfortunates - the handicapped and the terminally ill, shell-shocked army vets, wronged crime victims and other society misfits - choose to flee real life willingly, escaping to the limitless world of online sword and sorcery MMORPGs. Once a seasoned gamer and now a terminal cancer patient, Max grasps at this final chance to preserve his life and identity. So he goes for it - goes for the promise of immortality shared with a few trusty friends and the woman he loves. Together they roam the roads of AlterWorld and sample its agony and ecstasy born of absolute freedom.

The Monster Spawn


Deckhard Davis - 2017
    He’s more than a little perturbed to discover that he is dead, but it’s not the end of the world. Due to him being in the army, he gets a 2nd chance at existence in a fantasy VR game called Adonis Rebirth. There, Nathan will get to live another life, one filled with heroic quests and epic adventures. A land packed with legend and glory, where anyone can be a hero. But there’s a problem with his transition into the game. His consciousness isn’t loaded into a player character, but instead is transplanted into a beast who lives in the bowels of a mountain. Even worse, he finds out he is the end monster in a new limited-edition quest, where the 1st to complete it wins a unique prize. Soon, hero players are going to come and kill him. He needs to find a way to survive the hero onslaught, all the while trying to discover how to reverse what happened to him. He needs allies, but it’s hard to make them when you look like Nosferatu's ugly brother. Nathan will have to master his skills and learn how to play as the monster - his 2nd life depends on it.

Inheritance


Morgan Cole - 2020
    But when he walks through, he discovers he's trapped there and he’s got company.The station's AI enlists Jake to reclaim the systems needed to support life, but there’s a catch—he has only eight hours to complete the task or he’ll die alone in the cold vacuum of space. With only his trusty wrecking bar, work boots, and some basic survival equipment he must defeat the horrific monsters that infest the station before his air runs out.But aliens aren’t all he has to worry about. Hidden in the station is a message that could spell doom for Earth, and the entire universe along with it.If you're a fan of crunchy, sci-fi LitRPG with a healthy dose of base-building, then this space survival adventure with visceral combat is the book for you.

A Virtual Dream


Brent Roth - 2015
    He dreamed of a life where maintaining his health was no longer a daily struggle, and then when he had lost all hope, he had discovered a new virtual reality game on the horizon. A VR-MMORPG that offered him everything he lacked in real life, everything that had eluded him. A world where he could find adventure, companionship, and success all wrapped up in the singular package of The Dragon's Wrath. The game offered him a chance, a chance for salvation… a glimmer of hope. It was better than a dream, it was a virtual dream.

Core of Fear


Jonathan Brooks - 2019
    Caught after a record-breaking streak of murders, he was executed by lethal injection by the state, while thousands of his victims' grieving family members watched. That should’ve been the end of his emotionless and unfeeling existence – but it wasn’t. Sent to Hell – where he enjoyed himself entirely too much – he was singled out to become a Spirit Core, an invisible spiritual entity that eventually ended up back on Earth. At first unfamiliar to him, his new incarnation slowly revealed itself to have its own set of rules, following something not unlike the video games he used to program back when he was alive. At its root, he was tasked with invoking fear upon his new victims – but there was just one problem. Having never felt any emotions before, he had no idea what that meant. Contains LitRPG elements such as level progression and statistics.

The Feedback Loop Box Set 1-3


Harmon Cooper - 2016
     Trapped in an online world, he lives his days on repeat, fighting the same killer NPCs and playing out the same story line again and again. Suddenly, Quantum receives a message from an actual human player named Frances Euphoria, his first message in two years, a message that sparks an adventure across multiple online fantasy worlds the likes of which he could have never imagined. Now he's taking on a murder guild known as the Reapers, riding dragons across floating continents, using steam-powered robots to battle enemies as tall as skyscrapers, and equally important -- talking smack and backing it up with his vast inventory list of ridiculous guns and clever movie weapons. But things aren’t as easy as they sound. The Reapers are killing people in the real world. They are imprisoning players, manipulating orphans to do their bidding, running an insurance scam on trapped gamers, bringing death, violence, and destruction everywhere they turn. The Reapers are hunting Quantum Hughes online and in the real world, but they’ll soon learn the hard way that Quantum won’t back down without a fight. LitRPG action, humor, sci-fi fantasy worlds, adventure, and digital mayhem all in a cyberpunk setting.

The Legacy Builder


Ember Lane - 2018
    Barakdor, a world sliding helplessly to war. Lincoln wanted to be a warrior, a rogue or a mage, but he'd made a promise to himself, so he chose builder. He wasn’t supposed to play the game on his own, but now he wanted to build a legacy for Joan, a sanctuary in a virtual world. It was supposed to be a place where folk could come to get away from the terrors that the land held, a utopia he would create with his bare hands. It was supposed to be Joan’s legacy. But as the growling thunderheads of war gather, he begins to think it might be a last refuge. He begins to think it might be the land’s only hope. Fantasy collides with LitRPG in this first novel from The Land of Barakdor. Scroll up and get your copy.

Greenways Goblins


Daniel Schinhofen - 2019
    When freakish storms envelope the Earth, people start disappearing without a trace. Wild theories abound; is it aliens, spontaneous combustion, or perhaps quantum entanglement? The only ones who might know are those who have vanished. An average group of gamers is setting up to start a new campaign. The storms rage across the world, but they only care about the game they are about to start. Little do they know that they would be next to disappear from the face of the Earth. Shifted to a different world, the group of friends find that the gamer’s dream they had always harbored has come true, but not in the way they would have hoped. They are not there as themselves, but as the level one characters they had been preparing to play. Standing on a road with smoke rising in the distance, they would soon be given their first quest— but not the one they would have chosen. (This series contains dark themes, including but not limited to: suicide, torture, slavery, and worse.)

Survival Quest


Vasily Mahanenko - 2012
    Millions of them come to Barliona, looking forward to the things they can't get in real life: elves and magic, dragons and princesses, and unforgettable combat. The game has become so popular that players now choose to spend months online without returning home. In Barliona, anything goes: You can assault fellow players, level up, become a mythical hero, a wizard, or a legendary thief. The only rule that attempted to regulate the game demanded that no player be allowed to feel actual pain. But there's an exception to every rule. For a certain bunch of players, Barliona has become their personal hell. They are criminals sent to Barliona to serve their time. They aren't in it for the dragons' gold or the abundant loot. All they want is to survive the virtual inferno. They face the ultimate survival quest.

King's League


Jason Anspach - 2020
    King’s League is more than a game… it’s a way of life.For recently expelled college dropout Dirk Wilson, picking up and re-selling other player’s scraps from cleared dungeons and side quests gone sideways is the only thing keeping him from living on the streets.Tired of ramen noodles, past due notices, and feeling like his future is over before it ever started, Dirk decides that if he’s going to make something of himself, it’ll be within the game, taking advantage of the real life payouts from selling in-game goods on King’s League’s River Market.But the game leaves little margin for error, and Dirk’s virtual problems grow as large as his real life ones as he discovers a powerful conspiracy that impacts players from level one to level 99.1,000,000 copy #1 Bestselling authors Jason Anspach & JN Chaney team up to tell this action-packed, humorous LitRPG adventure that blends the cheeky fun of Ready Player One with all the adventure and excitement of Elder Scrolls & World of Warcraft.

End Online: Volume 1


D. Wolfin - 2014
    The society I live in is a segregated one, where it may not spoken aloud but everyone knows their place. In my turmoil, I turned to virtual reality, a brand new virtual reality MMO game called 'End Online' where I could once again walk. Perhaps in this second world I will get another chance. Only, things never go as planned. -Hollis Silvester

Blood of Fate


Dan Sugralinov - 2019
    This is the ninety ninth world for this traveler who has spent an entire life in each of his previous worlds. And now he is out of lives, his previous misdeeds leaving him with a negative balance of points and preventing him from reincarnating anew. Once he realizes that he must spend his final life in a poverty-stricken family in a backward world, he awakens the consciousness of the deceased Luca and ends his own physical existence, leaving all his abilities to his heir.One such ability is the use of the Wheel. Every traveler can spend points to spin the Wheel and gain a special talent, a superpower, or... a deadly illness. Luca spins the Wheel and gains the superpower of metamorphosis. Now he can regenerate, recover from deadly wounds and even take on the shape of other beings. The young man takes on the form of the Emperor: to avoid death, help his family and, finally, to bring order to the Empire!

Party Hard


David Petrie - 2018
    Now, instead of lying in bed dreaming about showing up late to class in their underwear, players step into a breathtaking world of fantasy and adventure. For most users, this is a dream come true. For players like MaxDamage24 and his sidekick Kirabell, it is about to become something else. After being fired, one of Noctem’s creators sets into motion a plan to bring the system crashing down. To stop the collapse, Max and Kira will have to gather their most trusted friends and embark on a quest that will push them to their absolute limits. Together they’ll face creepy dungeons, impossible bosses, and their own nightmares, all while doing their best to stay alive. With a mission this big, none of them will be the same after. The real question is… how much will they be forced to change? Only one thing is certain - if they want to survive, they’re gonna have to Party Hard.