The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulator where robed followers zip around on pigs, unleash machine‑gun fire, and eventually confront massive, 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 the team members’ kids suggested a snake‑shooter," Dietsch recalls. "We had a modular weapon system, so in about thirty minutes I built a gun that fires serpents.
The kid was thrilled, and the weapon stayed in the final build." This anecdote captures the chaotic, experimental spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival game where players can recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also highlights Wolf Haus’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled a high‑fidelity title to emerge from a remarkably small development team. 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 experience with just twelve people, and everyone else thought we were crazy." The team’s confidence stems from a history of achieving big results on shoestring budgets. "We come from indie film backgrounds and are used to punching well above our weight," Abbott explains. After 80 pitch meetings, Wolf Haus finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in the studio.
Wolf Haus’s founding members are steeped in Hollywood pedigree. 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, a 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 tinkering with Unreal Engine.
"Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge," he says. He taught himself through YouTube tutorials, built a few small prototypes, and eventually settled on a doomsday cult simulator that fused survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—essentially marrying his two passions into a single intellectual property. He crafted a proof‑of‑concept demo, expecting to hit a technical wall at some point. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, a company that would later become instrumental in the project’s financing.
Dooma’s chief financial officer 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 firm 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, in classic Hollywood fashion, a call from his old roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back. "I was ready for beach days and dog walks, but when I saw the demo, it blew my mind and convinced me to come out of retirement," Wendschuh says. He then introduced the project to Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros.
Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, who joined as a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was funding—a daunting task given the industry downturn of 2023.
The studio began pitching in the summer of that year, receiving polite interest but few firm commitments. After signing with CAA in Los Angeles and re‑pitching in 2024, Wolf Haus finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh credits the CAA connection, as well as veteran advisors like Schneider and Chartrand, for opening doors that might otherwise have stayed closed.
Despite the Hollywood‑sized pedigree, Join Us is being built by only thirteen full‑time staff. "We entered the project with a clear understanding of its scope and deliberately kept the team small so everyone could have a voice and directly shape the creative direction," Dietsch explains. To make such an ambitious open‑world feasible, the studio invested heavily in internal tools early on.
"Every system needs to be scalable and debuggable by a single person," he notes. The first year of development was therefore split between ideating gameplay and constructing the toolset that would sustain the project as it grew.
The equity funding model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools. "Krafton and Lifelike’s investment essentially self‑funded the game," says Wendschuh.
"We’re now only seeking modest project finance for marketing, but the core development was covered by those equity partners." This arrangement aligns investor incentives with the studio’s ethos of building reusable tools rather than cutting corners. When asked about generative AI—a hot topic in game development—Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not use it for creative work.
"Our process relies on a human touch. Hand‑crafting the experience is why we get up each morning," he says. Wendschuh adds that the team only employs AI for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting. Interestingly, Krafton, which has publicly positioned itself as an “AI‑first” company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring similar stances taken by other Krafton‑owned studios such as Neon Giant.
The team’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio. The six‑kilometer‑square map is entirely hand‑modeled, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors—a point of pride for a studio of this size. Dietsch reflects on the differences between film and game creation. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, subject to layers of approval and the need for high‑profile talent to secure financing.
In contrast, a game 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, emphasizing the immediacy that fuels his enthusiasm. Wendschuh observes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense set periods and a reliance on securing star power before a project ever gets greenlit.
While anyone can shoot a low‑budget movie with a backyard camera, breaking through without marquee names or distribution is rare. Games, however, face fewer gatekeepers; a small team can reach a global audience without A‑list actors or directors. Both men agree that the core creative impulse remains the same across mediums: storytelling and delivering an experience.
"When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games. It came down to a coin toss and a Christmas camera," Dietsch laughs. He learned programming on a TI‑83 calculator, a skill that later merged with his cinematic sensibilities.
"Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re trying to tell a story, engage an audience, and give them an experience. The tools change, but the goal stays the same."