The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers ride pigs, wield machine guns, and eventually confront colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One of the most memorable moments that didn’t make the final cut was the appearance of a "snake gun"—a weapon that fires actual serpents. According to Joe Dietsch, CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, the idea came from a team member’s child who simply asked, “Can there be a snake gun?” Using an in‑house tool that allowed rapid weapon prototyping, Dietsch spent about thirty minutes building the bizarre firearm, and the child’s delight convinced the studio to keep it in the final product. That anecdote encapsulates the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us.
The game is an open‑world sandbox survival experience set in a 1970s‑style cult. Players can recruit AI followers or invite friends in co‑op mode to expand their growing congregation, engage in bizarre rituals, and explore a hand‑crafted six‑kilometre‑square map teeming with strange enemies and surreal set‑pieces.
The title’s design philosophy leans heavily on emergent gameplay, encouraging players to experiment with absurd weapons, unpredictable AI behaviours, and a world that feels simultaneously nostalgic and otherworldly. What makes this achievement especially striking is the size of the development team. Wolf Haus operates with roughly a dozen full‑time staff members, a fact that co‑founder and COO Michael Abbott proudly touts as a deliberate act of disruption.
"We told ourselves we didn’t need a hundred‑person studio; twelve people could do the job," Abbott explained. The claim sounded impossible to many outsiders, but the team’s background in low‑budget indie filmmaking gave them the confidence to punch far above their weight. They completed eighty pitch meetings before finally securing equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which now hold stakes in the studio. The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs deep.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, the son of actor‑director Mel Gibson, and the two later co‑wrote and co‑directed indie features such as Happy Hunting and Manifest West. Abbott is the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, a production company originally founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to the Star Citizen universe.
Abbott also produced movies like Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx, giving him a solid grounding in large‑scale production pipelines. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments with Unreal Engine.
"The engine was free to download, and I’d been a gamer my whole life, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge," he recalled. He taught himself through YouTube tutorials, built a few modest prototypes, and eventually settled on the concept of a doomsday cult simulator—a blend of survival mechanics, grindhouse cinema aesthetics, and the narrative intrigue of cult movies.
The initial proof‑of‑concept was rough but compelling enough to catch Abbott’s attention, who then presented it to Dooma, a partner studio that helped refine the vision. Another key player is Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh.
He began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into video‑game writing in the early 2000s, contributing to titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. In the 2010s he founded several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After that windfall, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire.
A chance call from his old Hollywood‑hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into development when he was shown Dietsch’s prototype and was instantly impressed. Wendschuh then recruited Reid Schneider—former VP at Warner Bros.
Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet—as a strategic advisor, and brought on Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer. With this core leadership in place, the studio turned its focus to funding.
The timing was tough: the industry was in a downturn when they began pitching in summer 2023. After initial outreach, they partnered with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) for representation and continued pitching throughout 2024, eventually closing a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. The partnership with CAA proved valuable; the agency also represents high‑profile titles like 007: First Light, and its connections helped open doors that might otherwise have remained closed. "Derek Douglas, our agent at CAA, was my agent when I was making games for twelve years," Wendschuh noted, highlighting the importance of industry relationships.
Even with a modest headcount, Wolf Haus has managed to maintain a tight‑knit, collaborative culture. "Everyone has a voice, everyone touches the creative side, and the game feels like a product of a specific, cohesive group," said Dietsch.
To keep the project scalable, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from the outset. "If a system exists in the game, it must be debuggable and extensible by a single developer," Dietsch explained.
This tool‑first approach meant that the first year of development was split almost evenly between ideating gameplay concepts and building the internal engines that would later support an expansive open world. Funding from Krafton and Lifelike allowed the team to self‑finance the entire development cycle.
While they have begun to explore external project finance for marketing purposes, the core game was built using equity capital alone. This arrangement aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the continued development of reusable tools and pipelines. One topic that frequently surfaces when discussing ultra‑small development teams is the use of generative AI. Wolf Haus deliberately avoids it for creative tasks.
"We believe a human touch is essential to game making," Dietsch asserted. "We have a few AI subscriptions for mundane tasks like calendar management, but none of that influences the artistic side of the game." Interestingly, Krafton—despite branding itself as an "AI‑first" company—insisted that Wolf Haus not employ generative AI in its creative workflow, mirroring a stance taken by other Krafton‑owned studios such as Neon Giant. The studio’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game's massive map and its 15,000 voice lines, all recorded by human actors.
"That level of artisanal effort matters to us, even as an indie," Dietsch emphasized. He also highlighted the immediacy of game development compared with film. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring extensive pre‑production approvals and star attachments.
In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a single morning, inserted into the engine, and instantly tested—a speed and flexibility Dietsch finds exhilarating. Wendschuh added that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense, costly set‑ups and a reliance on high‑profile talent to secure financing.
While anyone can technically shoot a low‑budget film, breaking through without marquee names or distribution is rare. Game development, on the other hand, faces fewer gatekeepers; a small team can ship a polished product and reach a global audience without needing A‑list actors or directors.
Reflecting on his childhood, Dietsch recalled that his love for both mediums began with a simple coin toss: a camera for Christmas versus a programming calculator. "Whether you’re making a movie or a game, you’re delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience," he concluded. This philosophy underpins Join Us, a game that blends cinematic absurdity with interactive freedom, all crafted by a lean Hollywood‑inspired studio that chose human creativity over algorithmic shortcuts.