The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulation where robed followers zip around on pigs, wield machine guns, and eventually confront colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One of the most memorable, albeit omitted, moments was the appearance of a snake‑shooting weapon—a quirky addition that originated from a simple suggestion by a team member’s child. Joe Dietsch, the chief executive officer and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, recounted how his team leveraged a rapid‑scaling tool to prototype a gun that fires snakes in roughly thirty minutes.
The result was a playful, absurd element that still lives in the final product. This anecdote encapsulates the chaotic, sandbox‑style gameplay that Join Us promises. Set in an open‑world environment reminiscent of 1970s cult aesthetics, players can recruit followers or team up with friends in co‑op mode to build and manage their own cult. The experience blends survival mechanics with over‑the‑top humor, allowing for a wide range of emergent strategies and bizarre encounters.
What makes the project even more striking is the studio’s technology‑first philosophy, which has enabled a high‑fidelity, large‑scale title to be produced by a remarkably small crew. Michael Abbott, the chief operating officer of Wolf Haus, explained that the team deliberately set out to be disruptors: “We told ourselves we didn’t need a hundred developers—we could do everything with twelve.
Everyone else thought we were crazy.” Their confidence stems from a background in independent filmmaking, where small budgets often require creative problem‑solving and resourcefulness. After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity financing 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, the son of actor 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 originally founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to the Star Citizen universe.
Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. These cinematic roots have informed the studio’s storytelling sensibility and its willingness to take bold creative risks.
Join Us originated from Dietsch’s experimentation with Unreal Engine. He recalled that the engine’s free availability removed a major barrier to entry: “I’d loved games for years, but creating one felt out of reach.
I downloaded Unreal, followed YouTube tutorials, and started tinkering.” Though he had no prior development experience, Dietsch managed to produce a few small prototypes before committing to a larger vision—a doomsday cult simulator that fused his love of grindhouse cinema with survival gameplay. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, shared it with Abbott, and the concept quickly gained traction within the nascent studio.
The narrative and financial leadership of the studio came from Dooma Wendschuh, who began his career as a producer and screenwriter before transitioning to games in the early 2000s. He founded Sekretagent Productions, providing writing services for titles such as 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. After a brief retirement on a remote Canadian island, a call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into the industry.
Impressed by the Join Us demo, Wendschuh re‑entered development, bringing on Reid Schneider—former Warner Bros. Games VP—and Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, an ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as strategic advisor and chief technology officer respectively. Securing funding proved challenging amid a broader industry downturn.
The team began pitching in the summer of 2023, receiving positive feedback but facing a cautious market. With the assistance of Creative Artists Agency (CAA), they refined their pitch and eventually closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton in 2024.
Wendschuh noted that CAA’s representation, which also covers titles like 007: First Light, and the involvement of seasoned veterans such as Schneider and Chartrand, were instrumental in gaining investor confidence. Despite the pedigree, the studio’s operational model remains lean: only 13 full‑time staff members are working on Join Us.
Dietsch emphasized that this small‑team approach preserves a collaborative atmosphere where every voice influences the creative direction. To make an ambitious open‑world game feasible with limited personnel, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from the outset. "If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explained.
The first year of development was thus split between ideating gameplay and building the internal tools that would allow those ideas to scale across a six‑kilometre‑square map without collapsing under technical debt. The equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike has allowed Wolf Haus to self‑fund the majority of development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing. This structure aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the continued development of reusable tools and pipelines. While some studios lean on generative AI to accelerate asset creation, Wolf Haus deliberately avoids it in the creative process.
"We believe a human touch is essential for games," Dietsch said. "Using AI to generate core content would undermine why we get up each morning to make games." Wendschuh added that the studio only employs generative AI for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting, not for design or narrative work.
Interestingly, Krafton—despite branding itself as an "AI‑first" company—specifically required that Wolf Haus not incorporate generative AI into its creative pipeline as a condition of investment. This mirrors a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio, which publicly distanced itself from the parent company’s AI pivot. The commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s audio and world design.
All 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, and the expansive map was built manually rather than procedurally generated. Dietsch believes this level of artisanal effort is vital, even for an indie title, to preserve immersion and emotional resonance. Transitioning from film to games has offered Dietsch a sense of immediacy that he found lacking in traditional cinema.
In film, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and extensive pre‑production. In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped within hours, allowing creators to see and iterate on their vision in real time. Wendschuh noted that while film production is heavily front‑loaded—requiring high‑profile talent to secure financing—games face fewer gatekeepers. "You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to get a game greenlit," he said, highlighting the democratizing potential of interactive media.
Both mediums, however, share a core purpose: to deliver an experience, tell a story, and engage an audience. Dietsch reflected on his childhood fascination with both cameras and calculators, noting that his early programming on a TI‑83 calculator laid the groundwork for his dual passions.
Whether through a lens or a game engine, his goal remains the same—to craft compelling narratives that resonate with people. Join Us is poised to stand out not only for its eccentric premise and cult‑themed chaos but also as a proof of concept that a small, tightly knit team equipped with bespoke tools can produce a large‑scale, high‑quality game without relying on generative AI.
The studio’s blend of Hollywood heritage, entrepreneurial savvy, and technical ingenuity illustrates a new pathway for indie developers aiming to compete with larger studios while retaining creative autonomy.