The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulator. In the clip, robed followers charge on pig‑back while firing machine guns, culminating in a terrifying vision of Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
What didn’t make the cut was the infamous snake gun, a quirky weapon that developer Joe Dietsch, CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was inspired by a child’s off‑hand suggestion. "One of our team member’s son asked, ‘What would a snake gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool, so within about thirty minutes I built a gun that actually shoots snakes.
He was blown away, and we kept it in the final build," Dietsch recalls. This anecdote encapsulates the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival game 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 allowed a small crew to craft a high‑fidelity experience that would normally require a much larger staff.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up the team’s philosophy: "We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred developers; twelve will do.’ Most people laughed and called us impossible." Their confidence stems from a background in low‑budget, high‑impact indie filmmaking, where they learned to “punch above their weight.” After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which now hold stakes in Wolf Haus. The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs deep.
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 transition to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
These connections gave the team a cinematic sensibility that informs the game’s visual storytelling. Join Us began as a personal experiment in Unreal Engine.
"Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt blocked by the perceived barrier to creating something myself," Dietsch explains. He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, eventually producing a handful of small prototypes. The concept that persisted was a doomsday cult simulator that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—a hybrid he felt could become a unique intellectual property. The proof‑of‑concept was rough but promising.
Dietsch showed the early demo to Abbott, who then introduced it to Dooma. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had previously worked as a producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s, contributing writing to titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. He later founded several tech ventures, including the 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‑hill roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into the industry.
Wendschuh was instantly impressed by the prototype and helped bring in Reid Schneider—former VP at Warner Bros. Games—and Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as strategic advisor and chief technology officer respectively.
Securing funding proved challenging amid a broader industry downturn. The team began pitching in the summer of 2023, initially receiving polite interest but little commitment. After enlisting CAA (Creative Artists Agency) as representation and refining their pitch, they returned to investors in 2024 and finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh credits the CAA connection—whose roster includes titles like 007: First Light—and the presence of seasoned veterans Schneider and Chartrand for opening doors that might otherwise have remained closed.
Despite the high ambitions, the studio has remained deliberately lean: only 13 full‑time staff members are working on Join Us. Dietsch emphasizes that this small‑team model is intentional, fostering an environment where every voice matters and everyone can touch both the creative and technical aspects of the project. To make such a scope feasible, the team invested heavily in custom tooling from day one. "Any system we build must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch notes.
"We spent the first year simultaneously designing gameplay and building the internal tools that let us expand the open world without it collapsing under its own weight." The equity financing from Kraftor and Lifelike allowed Wolf Haus to self‑fund the development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing. This structure aligns the investors’ interests with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the continued development of reusable tools that will benefit future projects.
While many studios are turning to generative AI to accelerate content creation, Wolf Haus has deliberately avoided it. "We believe a game needs a human touch. Using AI to generate core assets would defeat the purpose of why we love making games," says Dietsch.
Wendschuh adds that the studio’s limited AI subscriptions are confined to administrative tasks like calendar management, not creative work. Krafton, despite branding itself as an “AI‑first” company, also insisted that Wolf Haus refrain from using generative AI in the creative pipeline.
This mirrors a broader industry caution, as seen with Krafton‑owned Neon Giant, which publicly distanced itself from AI‑driven development. Wolf Haus remains committed to handcrafted content: the six‑kilometre‑square map in Join Us is entirely hand‑built, and the game features roughly 15,000 voice lines recorded by human actors. "Even as a tiny indie, we felt it was vital to keep the human element intact," Wendschuh explains. 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 the coordination of high‑profile talent. In games, an inspiration can be coded into the engine within hours, allowing instant iteration and feedback. Wendschuh observes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense, costly set periods and a reliance on star power to secure financing.
While anyone can shoot a low‑budget movie, breaking through without marquee names is rare. By contrast, the video‑game market has fewer gatekeepers, making it more accessible for small teams to achieve commercial success without A‑list talent.
Both founders agree that the core creative impulse—telling stories and delivering experiences—remains the same across mediums. "When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games; it came down to a coin toss and whether I got a camera for Christmas," Dietsch reflects.
"I learned to program on a TI‑83, so the passion has always been there. Whether you’re crafting a film or a game, you’re trying to engage an audience, tell a story, and give them an experience. The medium changes, but the goal stays the same."