The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulation. In the clip, robed followers charge on pig‑back while brandishing machine guns, culminating in a shot of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the edit, according to Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—was the infamous snake gun.
"One of the team members’ kids asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us spin up a weapon in about thirty minutes, so I built it on the fly. The kid went nuts, and the weapon stayed in the final build," Dietsch recalls.
This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival title where players can recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to their 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled a high‑fidelity experience to be produced by a remarkably small team. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: "We set out to be disruptors. Everyone told us you needed a hundred‑person studio to pull off something of this scale, but we believed twelve could do it." Their confidence wasn’t naïve.
The founders came from indie‑film backgrounds where they routinely punched far above their budgets. After eighty pitch meetings, they finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in Wolf Haus.
The founding trio’s Hollywood pedigree runs deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of Mel Gibson and another Wolf Haus co‑founder.
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 originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine.
"I discovered Unreal was free to download and started tinkering with YouTube tutorials," he says. Though he had no formal game‑dev experience, he managed to ship a couple of modest titles before deciding to tackle something larger. The seed of Join Us was a “doomsday cult simulator” that blended his love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics, marrying filmic tropes and interactive design into a single intellectual property. He built a proof‑of‑concept prototype, expecting to hit a technical wall at some point.
When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, a venture that would later bring in key talent. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before transitioning to games in the early 2000s, providing writing services for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
In the 2010s he founded several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire.
Yet a call from his old Hollywood‑Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back. "Joe’s demo blew my mind and snapped me out of retirement," Wendschuh recounts.
He introduced the project to Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros. Games and current head of Raccoon Logic, who became a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer.
With the core team in place, the next hurdle was financing—an uphill battle during an industry downturn. The studio began pitching in summer 2023, initially receiving polite interest but little commitment. After enlisting Creative Artists Agency (CAA) as representation, they returned to the market in 2024 and finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh believes the CAA connection, along with veteran advisors like Schneider and Chartrand, was decisive.
"Derek Douglas, our CAA agent, had represented me for twelve years in games and previously headed the video‑game department at William Morris," he notes. Despite the high‑profile backing, Join Us is being built by just thirteen full‑time staff. Dietsch emphasizes that the small‑team model was intentional: "We wanted everyone to have a voice, to touch the creative process, and to feel ownership over a game made by a tight‑knit group." To make such an ambitious project feasible, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from day one. "Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains.
The first year of development was split between designing gameplay concepts and constructing the underlying toolset that would keep the open‑world map from collapsing under its own weight. The equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike allowed Wolf Haus to self‑finance the entire development, using the investors’ capital to cover salaries, technology, and later a modest amount of project finance for marketing. This structure aligns the investors’ interests with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the team to build reusable tools even if they slow immediate progress. "Whenever we encounter a problem we can’t solve, we build a tool to fix it," says Wendschuh.
"It may add development time, but it enables a small crew to deliver a game of this scope." When asked about generative AI, Dietsch gives a clear answer: the studio does not employ it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential. Using AI to generate assets would defeat the purpose of why we love making games," he says.
Wendschuh adds that the only AI they use is for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting. Interestingly, Krafton—publicly branding itself as an “AI‑first” company—explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant. The team’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio. The six‑kilometre‑square map was built manually, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, a point both Dietsch and Wendschuh stress as a core value.
Dietsch also reflects on the contrast between film and game creation. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and extensive pre‑production.
In games, an inspiration can be prototyped within hours, allowing immediate iteration. "You can have an idea this morning, drop it into the engine, and see it in action by lunch," he says, describing the exhilaration of rapid feedback. Wendschuh observes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense set‑days and a reliance on a handful of high‑profile talent to secure studio backing.
While anyone can shoot a backyard movie, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare. By contrast, the barriers to publishing a successful indie game are lower, as there are fewer gatekeepers and no need for A‑list actors or directors.
Both founders agree that storytelling is the common thread linking the two 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 reminisces. He learned programming on a TI‑83 calculator, merging his love for both visual narrative and interactive design.
Ultimately, whether through film or interactive media, the goal remains the same: to craft an experience, tell a story, and engage an audience.