The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulator. In the clip, robed followers zip around on pigs, unleash machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with a monstrous, Cthulhu‑like mass of tentacles. What the audience didn’t see was the infamous "snake gun," a quirky weapon that has become a hallmark of the game.
According to Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, the idea for that weapon came from an unexpected source. "One of the team members’ kids asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a modular weapon system that lets us prototype a new gun in under thirty minutes, so I built it on the spot. The kid was thrilled, and the weapon survived into the final build," Dietsch recalls. That anecdote perfectly illustrates the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us.
The title is an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style cult. The game’s design philosophy leans heavily on rapid iteration and tool‑driven development, enabling a small team to produce a high‑fidelity experience that would normally require a much larger staff. Michael Abbott, the studio’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: "We set out to be disruptors.
We told ourselves we could build a AAA‑level title with a dozen people, and everyone else thought we were crazy." Their confidence stems from a background in independent filmmaking, where crews often have to punch far above their weight. Abbott’s father, renowned Hollywood makeup artist Larry Abbott, helped him understand how to stretch limited resources, while Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of Mel Gibson—and later co‑wrote and co‑directed two indie movies, Happy Hunting and Manifest West.
Those experiences taught them to maximize impact with minimal manpower. Funding the project was a marathon of pitches. After 80 attempts, Wolf Haus finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took a stake in the studio. The partnership proved crucial, not only for capital but also for strategic guidance.
Krafton, despite branding itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, preferring a human‑centric approach. The origins of Join Us trace back to Dietsch’s early experiments with Unreal Engine.
"Unreal was free to download, and I was fascinated by the low barrier to entry for creating something from scratch," he says. He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, built a few modest prototypes, and eventually settled on the concept of a doomsday cult simulator—a blend of survival mechanics and grindhouse cinema that merged his passions for movies and games into a single intellectual property. Creating a proof of concept was a test of both vision and technical stamina. Dietsch expected to hit a wall at some point, but when he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter recognized its potential and passed it along to Dooma, the studio’s financial and narrative director.
Dooma, whose real name is Wendschuh, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into game writing in the early 2000s. He contributed narrative work to titles such as Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins, and later founded several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million.
After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet a sudden call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into the industry. "I was looking at the demo and it blew my mind.
It convinced me to come out of retirement," he recounts. He then introduced the project to Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros.
Games VP now heading Raccoon Logic, who became a strategic advisor. Schneider recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a veteran programmer from Ubisoft Montreal, to serve as chief technology officer. With a core team of roughly 13 full‑time staff, the studio focused heavily on building internal tools. Dietsch explains, "Every system we create must be scalable and debuggable by a single person.
We invest heavily in a toolkit that lets us expand features across an open‑world map without the project collapsing under its own weight." The first year of development was therefore split between ideating gameplay and engineering the tools that would make that gameplay possible. This tool‑first mindset also aligns with the equity investors’ philosophy: by funding tool development, Krafton and Lifelike enable Wolf Haus to maintain a lean crew while still delivering a polished product. The studio deliberately shuns generative AI for creative work.
"We believe a game needs a human touch. Using AI to generate assets would undermine why we get up every morning to make games," Dietsch says. Wendschuh adds that the only AI they employ is for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting.
Krafton even insisted on this stance, despite its own public AI ambitions, to ensure the studio’s creative integrity. All of Join Us’ content is handcrafted. The six‑kilometre‑square map was built by hand, and the game features roughly 15,000 voice lines recorded by real actors. This commitment to human‑generated assets reflects the team’s respect for creative labour and their desire to avoid displacing voice talent or artists with synthetic alternatives.
Comparing his film background to game development, Dietsch highlights the immediacy of the latter. In cinema, a concept can take years to materialise, requiring approvals, casting, and location scouting before a single frame is shot.
In contrast, a game idea can be prototyped within hours: "You can have an idea in the morning, drop it into the engine, see it instantly, and start iterating," he enthuses. Wendschuh notes that while film production is front‑loaded with high‑stakes negotiations for A‑list talent, games face fewer gatekeepers. "You don’t need a star director or a famous actor to get greenlit; you just need a compelling experience," he explains.
Both mediums, however, share a common creative impulse: storytelling and immersion. Dietsch reflects on his childhood, when a coin toss decided whether he’d pursue movies or games.
"I learned to program on a TI‑83 calculator, and I’ve loved both forms ever since. Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re trying to give someone an experience, tell a story, and engage them," he says. Join Us thus stands as a testament to what a small, tightly knit team can achieve when it leverages deep industry experience, invests in robust tooling, and remains committed to a human‑first creative process. The game promises a bizarre, satirical adventure set in a cult‑filled world, all built without the shortcuts of generative AI and with a level of craftsmanship that rivals much larger studios.