The trailer for Join Us first caught many eyes during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulator where robed followers zip around on pigs, unleash machine‑guns, and confront looming, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One quirky element that didn’t make the final cut of the preview was the snake‑shooting weapon, a feature that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, proudly attributes to a spontaneous idea from a team member’s child.
“His son asked, ‘What would a snake gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototype tool for weapons, so in about thirty minutes I built a gun that fires snakes. He was thrilled, and it stayed in the game,” Dietsch recalls.
That anecdote perfectly captures the chaotic, sandbox‑style gameplay Join Us promises: an open‑world survival experience where players can amass followers—or invite friends into co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑inspired cult. It also highlights the studio’s tech‑first mindset, which has allowed a relatively tiny crew to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a far larger staff. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: “We set out to be disruptors.
Everyone told us a twelve‑person team couldn’t deliver a game of this scope, but we knew from indie filmmaking that punching above our weight was possible.” Indeed, the founders bring a deep Hollywood pedigree. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of actor‑director 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 shift to Star Citizen. Abbott’s résumé also includes producing credits on movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
The seed of Join Us sprouted when Dietsch began tinkering with Unreal Engine, attracted by its free download model. “I’d loved games for as long as I’d watched movies, but creating something felt like a huge barrier,” he explains.
“I started learning Unreal through YouTube tutorials, built a few tiny prototypes, and eventually the idea of a doomsday cult simulator kept resurfacing because it merged my love for survival mechanics, grindhouse cinema, and interactive storytelling.” He crafted a proof‑of‑concept demo, expecting to hit a technical wall soon after. When he showed it to Abbott, the latter recognized its potential and presented it to Dooma, a partner that helped secure early backing. The financial side of the venture was spearheaded by Dooma CFO and narrative director Dooma Wendschuh, a former film producer and screenwriter who transitioned to games in the early 2000s.
Wendschuh’s résumé includes writing credits for Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins, as well as founding the cannabis formulation firm Ebbu, later sold for roughly C$430 million. After a brief retirement on a remote Canadian island, Wendschuh was lured back when his old Hollywood‑Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, called about a video‑game project. “The demo blew my mind and pulled me out of retirement,” he says. He then introduced the project to Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros.
Games VP now heading Raccoon Logic, and Schneider recruited former Ubisoft Montreal programmer Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand as chief technology officer. Funding proved challenging amid an industry downturn. The team began pitching in summer 2023, initially receiving polite interest but little capital. After enlisting CAA (Creative Artists Agency) as representation and refining their pitch throughout 2024, Wolf Haus finally closed a seed round with Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both taking equity stakes.
Wendschuh notes that CAA’s connections—especially to titles like 007: First Light—and the presence of seasoned veterans such as Schneider and Chartrand were instrumental in winning the investors’ confidence. What truly sets Join Us apart is how it’s being built: a core team of just thirteen full‑time staff.
Dietsch emphasizes that from day one the studio defined the project’s scope and deliberately kept the team small to preserve a collaborative atmosphere where “everyone has a voice and touches the creative.” To make a large‑scale open world feasible with limited manpower, the studio invested heavily in internal tooling. “Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person,” Dietsch says. “We spent the first year simultaneously designing gameplay and constructing the toolset that would let those systems expand across a six‑kilometre‑square map without collapsing under their own weight.” The equity funding model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools. Krafton and Lifelike’s capital financed development outright, with only a modest slice of project finance earmarked for marketing.
This arrangement aligns investor incentives with the studio’s ethos: building reusable tools that solve problems as they arise, even if it slows short‑term progress. “We prefer to build a bespoke solution rather than outsource to a black‑box,” Wendschuh explains. When asked about generative AI, the team’s response is unequivocal: they do not rely on it for creative work. “Our process is fundamentally human‑driven,” Dietsch asserts.
“We might use AI for mundane tasks like calendar management, but the design, art, and writing are all handcrafted.” Krafton, despite branding itself as an “AI‑first” company, explicitly required that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant. The commitment to human craftsmanship extends to the game’s assets. The entire six‑kilometre‑square world is hand‑sculpted, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by real actors rather than synthetic voices. Dietsch believes this tactile approach enhances immersion and respects the creative labor of voice talent and artists.
Comparing film and game development, Dietsch notes a key advantage of the latter: immediacy. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring studio approval, casting, and extensive pre‑production. By contrast, a game concept can be prototyped within hours, allowing creators to iterate rapidly.
Wendschuh adds that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with massive coordination required before a single shot is captured, whereas games face fewer gatekeepers—no need for A‑list actors or directors to secure financing. Both mediums, however, share a common creative impulse: storytelling. “Whether you’re making a movie or a game, you’re delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience,” Dietsch reflects. “My love for both started when I was six, split between programming on a TI‑83 and dreaming of making movies.
It’s a coin toss that landed me here, building a cult‑simulator with a dozen friends and no AI shortcuts.”