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 zip around on pigs, unleash a barrage of machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with a nightmarish vision of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
One detail that didn’t make the final edit was the infamous “snake gun,” a weapon that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was born from a simple suggestion by a team member’s child. "His son asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that lets us scale weapons in minutes, so within half an hour I built a gun that fires snakes. The kid was blown away, and the weapon stayed in the game," Dietsch recalls.
This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first philosophy, which has enabled a high‑fidelity title to emerge from a remarkably small crew.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: "We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred developers; twelve can do it.’ Most people thought we were crazy." Their confidence stems from a history of achieving big results on modest budgets.
Abbott grew up in the indie‑film world, where punching above one’s weight is the norm. After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in Wolf Haus.
The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs 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 move to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx.
Join Us originated when Dietsch began tinkering with Unreal Engine, which he discovered was free to download. "I’d loved games for years, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge. I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a few tiny prototypes," he explains.
Though he had no formal game‑development background, Dietsch quickly moved from these experiments to a full‑blown proof of concept for a doomsday cult simulator—a concept that merged his love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. The prototype caught Abbott’s eye, and he took it to Dooma, the studio where the CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, was working. Wendschuh’s career began in film as a producer and screenwriter before he transitioned to games in the early 2000s, founding Sekretagent Productions, which supplied writing for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
He later launched several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million (about $330 million USD). After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote restaurant on a tiny Canadian island, intending to retire. Yet a call from his old Hollywood‑Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back.
"I was looking at a video game Joe had made, and it blew my mind. It convinced me to come out of retirement," he says. Wendschuh then introduced the project to Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros.
Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, who became a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. Funding proved challenging amid an industry downturn.
The team began pitching in summer 2023, receiving polite interest but few commitments. After partnering with CAA in Los Angeles and refining their pitch throughout 2024, they finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh believes the CAA connection—alongside veteran advisors like Schneider and Chartrand—was pivotal; their agent, Derek Douglas, had previously represented Wendschuh during his twelve‑year game‑development career and headed the video‑game department at William Morris.
Despite the high ambitions, Join Us is being built by just 13 full‑time staff. Dietsch emphasizes that the small‑team model is intentional: "We wanted everyone to have a voice, to touch the creative process, and to feel ownership of the final product." To make such a scope feasible, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from day one. "Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," he notes.
The first year of development was therefore split between ideating gameplay and constructing the underlying toolset that would allow those ideas to scale across a six‑kilometre‑square open world without collapsing under its own weight. The equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools. "The money we received was used to self‑fund the game.
We’re now only adding a little project finance for marketing," explains Wendschuh. This model aligns investor incentives with the studio’s ethos: building reusable tools that solve problems as they arise, even if it slows immediate progress, because it enables a small team to deliver a large‑scale experience.
When asked about generative AI, the team is unequivocal: they do not employ it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential. Using AI to generate assets would defeat why we get up in the morning," Dietsch says. Wendschuh adds that the only AI they use is for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting.
Interestingly, Krafton—publicly positioning itself as an "AI‑first" company—insisted that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in development, mirroring a similar stance taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant. The studio’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s massive map and voice work. The entire six‑kilometre‑square world is manually built, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, a point both Dietsch and Wendschuh stress as vital to preserving artistic integrity.
Dietsch finds game development offers a immediacy that film lacks. In movies, an idea can take years to reach the set, requiring countless approvals and the involvement of high‑profile talent. By contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a single morning and instantly tested in the engine.
Wendschuh observes that filmmaking is heavily front‑loaded, with intense pre‑production phases and gatekeepers who control access to directors and stars. While anyone can shoot a backyard movie, breaking through without big names or distribution is rare. Games, however, have far fewer gatekeepers; a small indie can achieve success without A‑list actors or directors.
Both creators agree that whether you’re making a film or a game, the core mission is the same: to craft an experience, tell a story, and engage an audience. Dietsch reflects, "When I was six, I wanted to make movies or games—it boiled down to a coin toss and getting a camera for Christmas.
I learned programming on a TI‑83, so it’s always been a blend of the two mediums. The goal remains to deliver an immersive narrative, regardless of the platform."