The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulation where robed followers ride pigs, unleash machine‑gun fire, and eventually confront colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the cut was the infamous "snake gun," a quirky weapon that originated from a simple suggestion by a developer’s child. According to Joe Dietsch, CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, the child asked, “Can there be a snake gun?” Using an internal rapid‑prototyping tool, Dietsch was able to craft a functional snake‑shooting weapon in roughly thirty minutes, delighting the youngster and cementing the weapon’s place in the final game. That anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us.
The title is an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to build and lead a 1970s‑style cult. The game’s design philosophy is deeply rooted in the studio’s tech‑first mindset, which has allowed a small crew to aim for a high‑fidelity, large‑scale experience. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: “We wanted to be disruptors.
We told everyone we could build a AAA‑ish game with just twelve people, and most people thought we were crazy.” The team’s confidence stems from a history of achieving big results on modest budgets. Many of the founders come from independent film backgrounds, where doing more with less is the norm. "We come from indie movies and we’re used to punching far above our weight," Abbott explains. After an arduous 80‑pitch marathon, Wolf Haus finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving the studio the runway needed to bring Join Us to life.
Wolf Haus’s leadership is steeped in Hollywood pedigree. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University, where he met 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 transition to the Star Citizen project. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx.
This blend of cinematic experience and entrepreneurial grit informs the studio’s narrative‑driven approach to game development. The seed of Join Us was planted when Dietsch began experimenting with Unreal Engine, attracted by the fact that the engine could be downloaded for free. "I’d loved games for years, but there seemed to be a massive barrier to actually creating something," he recalls. By following YouTube tutorials, he built a few small prototypes before committing to a larger vision: a doomsday cult simulator that fused survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics.
He built an early proof‑of‑concept, expecting to hit a technical wall at some point. When he presented the demo to Abbott, the latter recognized its potential and took it to Dooma, a partner studio that helped refine the concept. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s chief financial officer and narrative director, entered the picture after a varied career that spanned film production, screenwriting, and video‑game narrative work.
He founded Sekretagent Productions, providing writing services for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later, he built a cannabis formulation company, Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million.
After a brief retirement on a remote Canadian island, a call from his old Hollywood roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into the industry. Impressed by Dietsch’s demo, Wendschuh helped assemble a strategic advisory team that included former Warner Bros. Games VP Reid Schneider and ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, who joined as chief technology officer. Securing funding proved challenging amid a market downturn in 2023‑24.
After initial outreach, Wolf Haus partnered with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles, leveraging the agency’s connections to pitch the project again in 2024. Their persistence paid off when Lifelike Capital and Krafton closed a seed round, providing the capital needed to continue development. Wendschuh credits CAA’s representation—alongside industry veterans like Schneider and Chartrand—for opening doors that might otherwise have remained shut. Despite the high ambitions, Join Us is being built by a lean team of just 13 full‑time staff members.
Dietsch emphasizes that the studio deliberately kept the headcount low to preserve a collaborative atmosphere where every employee can influence creative decisions. To make such a scope feasible, the team invested heavily in custom tooling early in the development cycle. "If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch says. By building robust pipelines and reusable tools, the studio ensured that expanding features across a sprawling open world wouldn’t cause the project to collapse under its own weight.
The equity‑funding model from Krafton and Lifelike has allowed Wolf Haus to self‑finance the game’s core development, using the investors’ capital to cover salaries, technology, and production costs. While a modest amount of project finance is being tapped for marketing, the bulk of the development budget remains internal. This arrangement aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term goal of increasing enterprise value, encouraging the team to continue building versatile tools that can serve future titles.
In an industry increasingly enamored with generative AI, Wolf Haus has taken a clear stance against its use in creative production. "We don’t use any generative AI for the game itself," Dietsch asserts. He believes that a human touch is essential to the artistic process and that outsourcing creative decisions to an algorithm would undermine the passion that drives the team.
Wendschuh adds that the studio only employs AI for mundane tasks such as calendar management and email drafting, never for narrative design, art, or voice work. Interestingly, Krafton—despite branding itself as an "AI‑first" company—explicitly required that Wolf Haus refrain from using generative AI in its creative pipeline, echoing similar policies at other Krafton‑owned studios.
All of Join Us’s assets are handcrafted. The six‑kilometre‑square map was built piece by piece by the art team, and the game features roughly 15,000 voice lines recorded by human actors. This commitment to hand‑crafted content reflects the studio’s belief that authenticity and craftsmanship resonate more strongly with players than cheap shortcuts. Dietsch finds the immediacy of game development especially rewarding compared to film.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring countless approvals and a massive budget before a director sees it on set. In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a single morning, placed into the engine, and instantly visualized. This rapid feedback loop fuels the team’s iterative design process and keeps morale high. Wendschuh points out that while film production is heavily front‑loaded—requiring star talent and studio backing before a project can move forward—games face fewer gatekeepers.
Anyone can publish a game without needing A‑list actors or directors, which democratizes the medium and raises the odds of success for small teams. Both mediums, however, share a common creative impulse: the desire to tell stories and craft experiences that engage audiences.
Reflecting on his childhood, Dietsch recalls that his love for both movies and games began with a simple coin toss and a camera for Christmas. He taught himself programming on a TI‑83 calculator, laying the groundwork for a career that now straddles two storytelling forms. Whether through film or interactive entertainment, his goal remains the same—to deliver compelling narratives that captivate and immerse. Join Us stands as a testament to what a focused, technically adept, and creatively driven team can achieve without relying on large staff numbers or AI shortcuts.
By leveraging Hollywood experience, strategic financing, and a commitment to handcrafted quality, Wolf Haus is poised to deliver a unique cult‑simulation that could redefine expectations for indie‑sized studios tackling ambitious, high‑production‑value games.