The buzz around Join Us began when its trailer lit up the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulation. The teaser showed robed followers careening on pig‑mounted platforms, wielding machine guns, and culminating in a nightmarish vision of Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
Yet one of the most memorable moments—an absurd "snake gun"—was omitted from the public cut. Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, explains that the weapon emerged from a simple, off‑hand suggestion by a team member’s child. "His son asked, ‘What would a snake gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us spin up a new weapon in about thirty minutes, so I built it on the fly.
The kid was thrilled, and the snake‑shooter stayed in the final build." That anecdote encapsulates the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival title where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style cult. The game’s design philosophy is as much about the tools behind the scenes as the on‑screen mayhem.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, describes the studio’s ambition: "We set out to be disruptors. Everyone told us you need a hundred‑person team to build something of this scale, but we believed twelve could do it.
Our background in indie film taught us to punch far above our weight." Indeed, the Wolf Haus team has a pedigree that reads like a Hollywood roll call. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who later co‑founded Wolf Haus and 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 originally founded by Chris Roberts before his Star Citizen venture.
Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. This blend of cinematic experience and entrepreneurial grit gave the founders a unique perspective on risk and resourcefulness. The seed of Join Us sprouted when Dietsch began tinkering with Unreal Engine after discovering it could be downloaded for free. "I’d loved games my whole life, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge.
I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a few tiny prototypes," he recalls. The simple act of downloading a free engine sparked a larger vision: a doomsday cult simulator that fused survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. "It let me merge the gritty vibe of 70s horror movies with the sandbox freedom of games," he says.
The early proof‑of‑concept was rough but promising. Dietsch pushed the prototype as far as he could, anticipating a technical wall that would force him to abandon the idea. Instead, he showed the demo to Abbott, who recognized its potential and presented it to Dooma, a venture firm that would later become an early backer. Another key player, Dooma CFO and narrative director Dooma Wendschuh, entered the picture after a career that spanned film production, screenwriting, and video‑game narrative work.
He founded Sekretagent Productions, providing story services for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. In the 2010s he launched 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, planning a quiet retirement. That plan was derailed when an old Hollywood‑hills roommate, Michael Abbott, called and showed him Dietsch’s demo.
"It blew my mind and pulled me out of retirement," Wendschuh says. Wendschuh then recruited Reid Schneider—formerly a vice‑president at Warner Bros.
Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet—as a strategic advisor. Schneider brought on Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a veteran programmer from Ubisoft Montreal, to serve as chief technology officer. With this core team in place, the next hurdle was financing.
The studio began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by a broader industry downturn. Despite the challenging climate, the team’s unique blend of film heritage and tech expertise attracted interest. They eventually secured a seed round from Kraftor and Lifelike Capital, both taking equity stakes in Wolf Haus. Wendschuh attributes part of that success to their representation by Creative Artists Agency (CAA), which also handles high‑profile titles like 007: First Light.
"Having an agent who understood both film and games opened doors that would have otherwise stayed closed," he notes. What truly sets Join Us apart is the way it is being built: a 13‑person full‑time crew. Dietsch emphasizes that the small‑team model is intentional, fostering an environment where every member can influence creative decisions.
To make such an ambitious open‑world experience feasible, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from day one. "If a system needs to scale, it must be debuggable by a single person," he explains. The first year of development was therefore split between designing gameplay concepts and constructing the internal tools that would keep those concepts from collapsing under their own weight. Funding from Krafton and Lifelike allowed the studio to self‑finance the entire development cycle, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing.
This equity‑driven model aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the team to build reusable tools rather than taking shortcuts. "Whenever we hit a problem we don’t know how to solve, we build a tool for it," says Dietsch.
"It may slow us down short‑term, but it empowers a tiny team to achieve what normally requires dozens of people." In an era where many studios tout generative‑AI pipelines, Wolf Haus deliberately steers clear of AI for creative work. "We believe a game needs a human touch," Dietsch states.
"Using AI to generate assets would undermine why we get up every morning to make games." Wendschuh adds a pragmatic nuance: "We do use AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, but nothing that touches the artistic side of development." Interestingly, Krafton—an "AI‑first" company on paper—insisted that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in its creative pipeline, fearing it could dilute the studio’s artistic integrity. This stance mirrors that of Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio that publicly distanced itself from the parent’s AI ambitions. The commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio. The six‑kilometer‑square map is entirely hand‑built, and the 15,000 voice lines are performed by human actors, not synthetic voices.
"Even as a small indie, we felt it was crucial to preserve that human element," says Dietsch. Comparing his film background to game development, Dietsch highlights the immediacy of the latter. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, subject to studio approvals, casting, and scheduling.
In game development, an inspiration can be prototyped in the engine within hours, allowing instant iteration. "You can take a concept from a morning brainstorm to a playable demo by lunch," he says, a speed that fuels his passion for the medium. Wendschuh observes that film production is front‑loaded with high‑stakes negotiations for talent and studio green‑lights, whereas games have fewer gatekeepers.
"Anyone can rent a camera and shoot a backyard movie, but without star power it’s hard to break through. In games, you don’t need an A‑list actor or director to reach an audience," he notes.
This democratization aligns with Wolf Haus’s ethos: a small, passionate team leveraging technology and cinematic storytelling to craft a unique experience. Ultimately, both mediums share a common creative impulse: to tell stories and evoke emotions.
Dietsch reflects on his childhood, recalling a coin‑toss decision that sent him down the path of either games or movies. "Whether it’s a film or a game, you’re delivering an experience, a narrative, an engagement.
The tools change, but the heart of it stays the same," he concludes. Join Us is poised to deliver a wildly original cult‑sim experience, built by a lean crew that blends Hollywood know‑how, entrepreneurial savvy, and a steadfast refusal to rely on generative AI. The result is a game that promises both chaotic fun and a testament to what a small, determined team can achieve when they harness the right tools and a clear creative vision.