You may remember seeing the trailer for Join Us during the Xbox Showcase in June. The clip introduced a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers ride pigs, unleash machine‑guns, and eventually face off against colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the final cut was the infamous "snake gun," a weapon that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, proudly attributes to a spontaneous idea from a team member’s child.
"His son asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooter look like?’ We had a modular gun system, so I whipped up a snake‑firing weapon in about thirty minutes. The kid went nuts, and we kept it in the game," Dietsch recounts.
This anecdote encapsulates the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where you can recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to your 1970s‑style doomsday cult. It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a small crew to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a far larger staff. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up the team’s ambition: "We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred‑person studio; twelve talented people can pull this off.’ Most people laughed, saying it was impossible.
Yet we had a track record of punching far above our weight in indie film, so we knew it could work." After 80 pitch meetings, the studio finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving Wolf Haus the financial runway to bring Join Us to life. The founders’ Hollywood roots run 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, a production company originally founded by Chris Roberts before he turned his attention to Star Citizen.
Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. These connections provided not only industry know‑how but also a comfort with operating on shoestring budgets while delivering cinematic quality.
Join Us began as a personal experiment in Unreal Engine. "I discovered Unreal was free to download and thought, ‘Why not give it a try?’" Dietsch explains.
He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, creating a few tiny prototypes before deciding to tackle something bigger. The seed of the project was a fascination with a doomsday cult simulation—a concept that merged his love for survival mechanics, grindhouse cinema, and the storytelling potential of games. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming it would eventually hit a technical wall. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter immediately took it to Dooma, a partner that helped shape the vision.
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. In the early 2000s 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 several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (about $330 million USD).
After cashing out, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet a sudden call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into development.
He watched Dietsch’s demo, was blown away, and decided to join the effort. Through Wendschuh’s network, Wolf Haus recruited Reid Schneider—former VP at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet—as a strategic advisor. Schneider, in turn, brought on Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer.
By the summer of 2023 the core team was in place, but securing capital proved challenging amid an industry downturn. The studio enlisted the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) to amplify its outreach, and after a second round of pitches in 2024, Lifelike Capital and Krafton committed to a seed round. The partnership with CAA—who also represent titles such as 007: First Light—proved instrumental, as did the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand.
"My agent at CAA, Derek Douglas, had represented me for twelve years in games and previously headed the video‑game department at William Morris," Wendschuh notes, underscoring how personal relationships can open doors even in a tight market. What truly sets Join Us apart is its development model: a full‑time staff of just 13 people.
Dietsch emphasizes that the studio entered the project with a clear understanding of scope, deliberately keeping the team small so that every member could have a voice and directly influence the creative direction. To make a sprawling, open‑world experience feasible with such limited manpower, Wolf Haus invested heavily in internal tooling from day one.
"Every system we build must be scalable and debuggable by a single developer," Dietsch explains. The first year of production was split between ideating gameplay features and constructing the underlying toolset that would keep the project from collapsing under its own weight as the world expanded.
Funding from Krafton and Lifelike allowed the studio to self‑finance development, with the investors taking equity stakes rather than imposing strict milestone‑based payments. This arrangement gave Wolf Haus the breathing room to iterate on tools and content without the pressure of immediate commercial returns.
"Equity partners want the studio to increase its enterprise value, so they encourage us to build robust tools that can be reused on future projects," says Wendschuh. While this approach may slow short‑term progress, it empowers a tiny team to achieve results that would otherwise demand a much larger workforce.
In an industry increasingly buzzing about generative AI, Wolf Haus deliberately steers clear of it for creative tasks. "We don’t use generative AI in the game’s development," Dietsch states plainly. "Our work is fundamentally human‑driven; handing it over to an algorithm would defeat the purpose of why we love making games." The team does employ AI‑powered services for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, but none of the artistic assets—models, textures, voice lines—are generated by AI.
Krafton, despite branding itself as an "AI‑first" company, also insisted that Wolf Haus avoid AI in the creative pipeline, aligning with the studio’s philosophy that AI could threaten jobs for voice actors and artists. Indeed, every square kilometre of Join Us’s map is handcrafted, and the game boasts roughly 15,000 lines of dialogue recorded by human performers. Dietsch believes this human touch is essential, especially for an indie title that aims to deliver a distinctive, immersive experience. Transitioning from film to games, Dietsch appreciates the immediacy games afford.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring countless approvals and a massive crew before a director ever sees the finished product. In contrast, a game developer can prototype a mechanic in a single morning, see it live in the engine, and iterate instantly.
Wendschuh observes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with high‑stakes negotiations for A‑list talent before a project ever gets green‑lit. While anyone can shoot a backyard movie, breaking through without star power or a distribution deal is rare. Games, however, have far fewer gatekeepers; a small studio can release a polished product directly to players without needing Hollywood‑level endorsements.
Both mediums, though, share a core creative impulse: storytelling and evoking emotion. Dietsch reflects on his childhood, when a coin toss decided whether he’d receive a camera or a programming kit for Christmas.
Whether through film or interactive media, his goal remains the same—to craft experiences that captivate audiences. Join Us, with its bizarre cult‑themed gameplay, handcrafted world, and a development philosophy rooted in human creativity, exemplifies how a tiny, determined team can disrupt expectations and deliver a game that feels both massive in scope and intimate in execution.