You may remember seeing the Join Us trailer during the Xbox Showcase in June. The clip introduced a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers zip around on pigs, fire off machine guns, and the finale hints at colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles looming in the distance.
What didn’t make the edit was the infamous snake‑gun, a weapon that Joe Dietsch, CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was born from a child’s off‑hand suggestion. "One of the team members’ kids asked, ‘What if there was a snake gun?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool for firearms, so within about thirty minutes I built a gun that actually shoots snakes. It blew his mind, and we kept it in the final build," 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 AI followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s tech‑first mindset, which has enabled a high‑fidelity, large‑scale title to emerge from a remarkably small development team.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: “We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone we could build a AAA‑ish game with just twelve people. Most people laughed and said it was impossible.” The team’s confidence stems from a history of doing big things on shoestring budgets. “Our background is indie film,” Abbott says.
“We’re used to punching far above our weight.” After eighty pitches, Wolf Haus finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took a stake in the studio. The founders’ Hollywood roots run deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University in California alongside Louie Gibson, son of actor‑director Mel Gibson and another co‑founder of Wolf Haus.
Together they 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 he turned his attention to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us began as a hobby project for Dietsch in Unreal Engine.
"I discovered Unreal was free to download and started tinkering after watching YouTube tutorials," he explains. "I’d loved games for years, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge. Picking up Unreal let me experiment without any upfront cost." Even without prior development experience, Dietsch managed to ship a couple of small prototypes before deciding to tackle something larger. "I kept circling back to the idea of a doomsday cult simulator because it merged my love for survival mechanics, grindhouse cinema, and the storytelling possibilities of both games and movies into a single IP." He built a proof‑of‑concept, expecting to hit a technical wall at some point.
When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, a partner studio that helped refine the vision. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had begun his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s. He founded Sekretagent Productions, providing writing services for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
Later, he launched several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After cashing out, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire and walk his dog on the beach. Yet, in classic Hollywood fashion, a call from his old roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back. "I was told a friend had made a video game.
I watched the demo, it blew my mind, and I came out of retirement," Wendschuh says. He then introduced the project to Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet.
Schneider joined as a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer. With the core team in place, the next hurdle was financing—an especially tough task during the industry downturn of 2023‑24. The studio began pitching in the summer of 2023, receiving polite interest but little commitment.
"People liked what we were building, but the market was cold," Dietsch notes. The team enlisted the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles, re‑approached investors in 2024, and eventually closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh believes CAA’s representation, which also covers titles like 007: First Light, was crucial, as was the involvement of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand.
"My agent at CAA, Derek Douglas, had represented me for twelve years in games and previously ran the video‑game department at William Morris," he adds. Despite the impressive pedigree, Join Us is being built by only thirteen full‑time staff members.
"We entered the project with a clear understanding of scope and a desire to keep the team small so everyone has a voice and can touch the creative process," says Dietsch. To make such an ambitious open‑world title feasible, the studio invested heavily in internal tooling from day one. "Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains.
"We built a robust toolkit so that as features spread across a six‑kilometre‑square map, the project doesn’t collapse under its own weight. The first year was as much about creating the tools as it was about designing the game." The funding structure gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect those tools.
Krafton and Lifelike’s equity investment was 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 support our tool‑building ethos. When we encounter a problem we can’t solve, we simply build a tool to fix it.
It may slow development, but it enables a tiny team to deliver a game of this scale," Wendschuh says. When the conversation turns to tiny‑team development, generative AI often comes up.
Wolf Haus deliberately steered clear of it. "We don’t use generative AI for any creative work. The human touch is essential to us.
We love making games, and handing the creative process over to an algorithm would defeat the purpose of why we get up each morning," Dietsch states. Wendschuh adds that the studio only uses AI for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting.
Krafton, which markets itself as an “AI‑first” company, actually required Wolf Haus to certify that no generative AI would be used in the game's creation. This mirrors the stance of Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio that publicly distanced itself from the parent’s AI pivot.
"We respect creative professionals and don’t want AI to replace voice actors or artists," Wendschuh emphasizes. The six‑kilometre‑square world in Join Us is entirely handcrafted, and its 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors—a point the team considers non‑negotiable even for an indie title. Dietsch finds the immediacy of game development liberating compared to film.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring countless approvals and the involvement of high‑profile talent. "In games, you can have an idea this morning, drop it into the engine, see it instantly, and iterate on the spot," he says. Wendschuh notes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense, expensive set work and a reliance on securing A‑list directors or actors to greenlight a project.
While anyone can technically shoot a movie with a backyard camera, breaking through without major names or distribution is rare. By contrast, the lower barriers in games mean a small, passionate team can reach a global audience without celebrity backing. Both men agree that the core creative drive is the same across mediums: telling stories and delivering experiences. "When I was six, I wanted to make either games or movies.
It came down to a coin toss and whether I got a camera for Christmas. I learned to program on a TI‑83, so I’ve always been split between the two. Ultimately, whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re crafting an experience, a narrative, and an emotional connection," Dietsch reflects. Join Us therefore stands as a testament to what a focused, technically savvy, and Hollywood‑savvy indie studio can achieve without relying on massive headcounts or cutting‑edge AI.
By marrying a quirky, over‑the‑top premise with disciplined tool development and a clear funding strategy, Wolf Haus is poised to deliver a cult‑simulator that feels both grand in scope and intimate in its handcrafted details.