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 zip around on pigs, wield machine guns, and eventually confront colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the cut, according to Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—was the infamous snake‑gun. "One of our team members’ kids suggested, ‘What if there’s a snake gun?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool for weapons, so in roughly thirty minutes I built a gun that fires snakes.
It blew the kid’s mind and it stayed 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 set in a 1970s‑style cult where players can recruit AI followers or real‑world friends to join their bizarre cause. It also illustrates why Wolf Haus’s development philosophy leans heavily on custom tools and a tech‑first mindset, enabling a high‑fidelity title to emerge from a surprisingly small crew. "We set out to be disruptors," says Michael Abbott, the studio’s chief operating officer.
"We told ourselves, ‘We don’t need a hundred‑person studio; twelve talented people can pull this off.’ Everyone thought we were dreaming, but our indie‑film background taught us to punch far above our weight." The journey to funding was far from smooth. After 80 pitches, Wolf Haus finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in the company. The founders’ Hollywood pedigree helped open doors. 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, the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott, helped launch Ascendant Pictures, the production house founded by Chris Roberts before he turned his attention to Star Citizen, and later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine.
"Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games, but the barrier to actually building something felt huge," he explains. He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, eventually creating a handful of small prototypes before committing to a larger vision. The core idea—a doomsday cult simulator that blends survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—kept resurfacing. "It merged everything I love about movies and games into one IP," he says.
The proof‑of‑concept demo impressed Abbott, who then presented it to Dooma, the studio’s early‑stage investor. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had previously produced and written for films before transitioning to games in the early 2000s, contributing writing services to titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins through his own firm, Sekretagent Productions. In the 2010s he founded several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million (about $330 million USD).
After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet a call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into development.
"I watched the demo and it blew my mind, so I came out of retirement," he recounts. Wendschuh then recruited Reid Schneider—former Warner Bros. Games VP and now head of Raccoon Logic, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet—as a strategic advisor, and brought in Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer.
With this core leadership in place, the studio turned its attention to financing during a market downturn. Initial outreach in summer 2023 yielded interest but no commitments. After signing with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) and re‑pitching in 2024, Wolf Haus finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton.
The partnership with CAA, which also represents titles like 007: First Light, proved invaluable, as did the involvement of seasoned game veterans Schneider and Chartrand. "My agent at CAA, Derek Douglas, had represented me for twelve years in the gaming world and previously ran the video‑game department at William Morris," notes Wendschuh. Despite the high ambitions, Join Us is being built by only 13 full‑time staff members. 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 over the final product." To make such a scope 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," he explains. The first year of development was therefore split between designing gameplay concepts and engineering the pipelines that would sustain them across an open‑world map. The equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike allowed Wolf Haus to self‑finance the entire development, only seeking external project finance for marketing later on.
This arrangement aligns investor incentives with the studio’s ethos of building reusable tools: "Whenever we hit a problem we don’t know how to solve, we build a tool. It may slow us down short‑term but it enables a tiny team to deliver a AAA‑ish experience." When asked about generative AI, the team is unequivocal: they do not rely on it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential.
Using AI to generate art or dialogue would undermine why we get up in the morning," says Dietsch. Wendschuh adds that their only AI usage is for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting. Interestingly, Krafton—publicly positioning itself as an "AI‑first" company—specifically required that Wolf Haus not employ generative AI in the game's creation, mirroring similar stances from other Krafton‑owned studios such as Neon Giant. The commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s massive six‑kilometer‑square map and its 15,000 voice lines, all recorded by human actors.
"Even as a modest indie, we felt it was vital to keep the experience fully human‑crafted," Dietsch asserts. Dietsch also reflects on the contrast between filmmaking and game development. In film, an idea can take years to materialize, subject to studio approvals and scheduling constraints.
In games, a concept can be prototyped within hours, allowing immediate iteration. "You can have an idea at breakfast and see it in the engine by lunch," he says, highlighting the immediacy that attracted him to interactive media. Wendschuh notes that traditional film production is front‑loaded with high‑stakes negotiations for A‑list talent and studio greenlights, whereas games face far fewer gatekeepers.
"Anyone can rent a camera and shoot a backyard movie, but without star power or distribution, success is unlikely. By contrast, a well‑made game can reach a massive audience without celebrity endorsement," he explains. Both founders agree that the core creative drive—telling stories and delivering experiences—remains the same across mediums.
"When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games; it boiled down to a coin toss and a Christmas camera," Dietsch smiles. "Whether you’re crafting a film or a game, you’re shaping an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience.
The medium changes, but the purpose stays constant."