The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator. In the clip, robed followers charge on pigs, unleash machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with a monstrous, Cthulhu‑like mass of tentacles. One element that didn’t make the final cut was the infamous snake gun, a feature that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was born from a child’s off‑hand suggestion. "One of our team member’s kids asked, ‘What if there was a snake gun?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool for weapons, so within about thirty minutes I built a gun that actually fires snakes.
The kid went nuts, and we kept it in the game," Dietsch recalls. That anecdote captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can recruit followers—or other players in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first philosophy, which has enabled a small crew to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a far larger staff. "We set out to be disruptors," says Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer.
"We told everyone we could build this with just twelve people. Most people thought we were crazy." Abbott and his teammates have a history of achieving big results on modest budgets. Coming from indie‑film backgrounds, they are accustomed to punching well above their weight.
After 80 pitches, they finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in Wolf Haus. The founders’ Hollywood connections run deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of Mel Gibson—and the two later co‑wrote and co‑directed the indie features Happy Hunting and Manifest West.
Abbott is the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, the production company founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
Join Us began as a personal experiment for Dietsch in Unreal Engine. "I discovered Unreal was free to download and started tinkering with it using YouTube tutorials," he explains. Though he had never built a game before, he managed to create a few small prototypes before deciding to tackle something larger.
The idea of a doomsday cult simulator kept resurfacing because it merged his love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema, bridging the worlds of film and games into a single intellectual property. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, anticipating that at some point a technical barrier would force him to stop. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, a partner studio.
Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had previously worked as a producer and screenwriter in film before moving into games in the early 2000s, providing writing for titles such as Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Wendschuh later founded several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation firm Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After selling his cannabis business, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire.
Yet, in classic Hollywood fashion, an unexpected call from his old roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into development. "I was looking at the video Joe sent, and it completely blew my mind. It convinced me to come out of retirement," Wendschuh says. He then introduced the project to Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros.
Games VP now heading Raccoon Logic, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet. Schneider joined as a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, an ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer.
With the core team in place, the next hurdle was financing—a task made harder by a market downturn in mid‑2023. The studio pitched the game repeatedly, eventually partnering with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles for representation. After a second round of pitches in 2024, they closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton.
Wendschuh believes CAA’s clout, combined with the credibility of veterans like Schneider and Chartrand, was pivotal. "Derek Douglas, our CAA agent, had represented me for twelve years and previously ran the video‑game department at William Morris," he notes. Despite the pedigree, Join Us is being built by a lean crew of just thirteen full‑time staff. The team deliberately kept the group small to ensure every member could influence creative decisions and maintain a cohesive vision.
To make such an ambitious project feasible, Wolf Haus invested heavily in internal tooling from the outset. "Any system we create must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains.
"We spent the first year simultaneously designing the game and building the tools that would let us expand it without the project collapsing under its own weight." The funding structure also afforded the studio the luxury of time to perfect these tools. Krafton and Lifelike’s equity investments were used to self‑fund development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing. "Equity partners want the studio to increase its enterprise value, so they encourage us to build robust tools," says Wendschuh. "When we hit a problem we can’t solve, we simply build a tool to address it.
It may slow us down short‑term, but it enables a tiny team to deliver a game of this scale." When asked about generative AI, Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not rely on it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential. Using AI to generate core content would defeat the reason we love making games," he says. Wendschuh adds that while they use AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, it plays no role in design, art, or narrative.
Interestingly, Krafton, which has branded itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly discouraged the use of generative AI in Wolf Haus’s creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio. Both founders stress that preserving jobs for voice actors and artists is a core value.
The six‑kilometre‑square map in Join Us is handcrafted, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human talent—an effort they deem vital even for an indie‑scale project. Dietsch also reflects on the differences between film and game development.
In film, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring countless approvals and the involvement of high‑profile talent before it ever sees the light of day. In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped within hours, allowing creators to instantly test and iterate. "You can have an idea in the morning, drop it into the engine, and see it immediately," he says, describing the exhilarating immediacy of interactive media. Wendschuh observes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense, short‑term bursts of activity on set, while games offer a more distributed workflow with fewer gatekeepers.
"Anyone can shoot a backyard movie, but without big names or distribution, success is unlikely. In games, the barrier to entry is lower, and you don’t need an A‑list actor or director to reach an audience," he explains. Both founders agree that storytelling is the common thread tying the two mediums together.
"Whether you’re making a movie or a game, you’re trying to give someone an experience, tell a story, and engage them," says Dietsch, who grew up programming on a TI‑83 calculator and dreaming of both cameras and consoles. Their shared Hollywood heritage, entrepreneurial spirit, and commitment to handcrafted creativity have culminated in Join Us—a cult‑themed, open‑world sandbox that proves a small, focused team can deliver a massive, high‑quality experience without leaning on generative AI.