The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult‑simulation. The teaser showed robed followers charging on pig‑back while firing machine guns, before cutting to a massive, Cthulhu‑like tangle of 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 the team members’ kids suggested a snake‑shooting weapon," Dietsch recalls. "We had a rapid‑prototyping tool for firearms, so within half an hour I built a gun that launches snakes.
The kid was thrilled, and the weapon stayed in the final build." That anecdote captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op—to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has let a tiny crew deliver a high‑fidelity experience that would normally require a much larger staff.
"We set out to be disruptors," says Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer. "We told ourselves, ‘We don’t need a hundred developers; twelve can do it.’ Everyone thought we were naive." The team’s confidence stems from a history of achieving big results on shoestring budgets.
"Our background is indie film," Abbott notes. "We’re accustomed to punching well above our weight." After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took a stake in Wolf Haus.
Wolf Haus’s founders have deep Hollywood connections. 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 is the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, the production company founded by Chris Roberts before his Star Citizen venture. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. The seed of Join Us sprouted when Dietsch began experimenting in Unreal Engine. "Unreal is free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt blocked from creating anything myself," he explains.
He taught himself through YouTube tutorials, built a few tiny prototypes, and eventually gravitated toward a doomsday‑cult concept that merged his love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He crafted a proof‑of‑concept demo, showed it to Abbott, and the pair took it to Dooma for further development.
Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s chief financial officer and narrative director, entered the gaming world after a career as a film producer and screenwriter. In the early 2000s he founded Sekretagent Productions, providing narrative work for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
Later he launched several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation firm Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million (about $330 million USD). After a brief retirement on a remote Canadian island, a call from his old Hollywood‑Hills roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into the industry. "I saw the demo Joe had made and it blew my mind," Wendschuh says, prompting him to join the effort. Wendschuh 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 in place, the next hurdle was financing, a task made tougher by the industry downturn of 2023‑24.
After initial outreach, the team enlisted CAA (Creative Artists Agency) as representation, re‑pitched in 2024, and finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. The partnership with CAA, which also handles titles like 007: First Light, proved valuable, as did the presence of veteran game professionals.
"Derek Douglas, our CAA agent, had represented me for a dozen years and previously headed the video‑game department at William Morris," Wendschuh notes. What truly sets Join Us apart is its production model: a studio of just 13 full‑time staff. "We entered the project with a clear sense of scope and wanted to keep a small‑team culture where everyone has a voice and touches the creative process," says Dietsch.
To make such an ambitious open‑world game feasible, the team invested heavily in custom tooling early on. "Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains.
"We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a massive map without the project collapsing under its own weight. The first year was as much about building those tools as it was about designing the game itself." Funding from Krafton and Lifelike allowed the studio to develop these tools without external pressure. "The equity partners’ money finances the game directly, making it essentially self‑funded," Wendschuh says.
"We’re now using a bit of project finance for marketing, but the core development was covered by their investment." Both investors share the studio’s ethos of tool‑driven development. "Because our backers benefit from increased enterprise value, they support our extensive tooling approach," Wendschuh adds. "Whenever we hit a problem we don’t know how to solve, we build a bespoke tool.
It may slow us down short‑term, but it enables a tiny team to deliver a game of this scale." When asked about generative AI, Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not rely on it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential. Using AI to generate content would defeat the reason we get up each morning," he says.
Wendschuh concedes the team uses AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, but not for any artistic aspect. Krafton, despite branding itself as an “AI‑first” company, also insisted that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline.
This mirrors the stance of Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio that publicly rejected AI‑driven development. "We respect creative professionals and don’t want AI to replace voice actors or artists," Wendschuh emphasizes. The six‑kilometre‑square map in Join Us is hand‑crafted, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors—a point the team considers vital, even for an indie title.
Dietsch highlights a key advantage of game development over film: immediacy. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring countless approvals and the involvement of high‑profile talent.
In games, a concept can be prototyped in a single morning and instantly visualized in the engine. "You can see your idea, touch it, and iterate right away," he says. Wendschuh observes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense set work and a reliance on securing A‑list talent to greenlight a project. While anyone can technically shoot a movie with a backyard camera, breaking through without major names or distribution is rare.
By contrast, the video‑game market has fewer gatekeepers, making it easier for small teams to achieve success without celebrity endorsement. Both creators agree that whether you’re making a movie or a game, the core mission is the same: to craft an experience, tell a story, and engage an audience.
"When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games; a coin flip and a Christmas camera set me on this path," Dietsch reflects. "Programming on a TI‑83 and storytelling have always been intertwined for me, and that blend continues to drive everything we do at Wolf Haus."