The buzz around Join Us first erupted when its trailer lit up the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulation. In the clip, robed followers charge on pig‑back, wielding machine guns, before the screen erupts into a nightmarish vision of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the final cut was the infamous "snake gun"—a weapon that shoots actual serpents.
According to Wolf Haus Games’ CEO and creative director Joe Dietsch, the idea sprang from a child’s off‑hand question and was realized in a matter of minutes thanks to an in‑house tool that can rapidly prototype firearms. "One of our team member’s son asked, ‘Can there be a snake gun?’ We had a modular gun system, so I whipped up a snake‑shooting prototype in about thirty minutes. The kid went wild, and we kept it in the game," Dietsch recalls. This anecdote captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style doomsday cult.
It also illustrates the studio’s tech‑first philosophy, which has enabled a high‑fidelity, large‑scale experience to be built by a remarkably small crew. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: "We wanted to be disruptors. Everyone told us a twelve‑person team couldn’t deliver a game of this scope, but we’d already proven we could punch well above our weight in indie film. We kept pushing until Krafton and Lifelike Capital finally came on board, taking equity stakes and giving us the runway we needed." 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 banner founded by Chris Roberts before he turned his attention to Star Citizen. Abbott’s film résumé also includes a producing credit on the Jamie Foxx‑led Fight for ’84. Join Us began as a personal experiment in Unreal Engine.
"Unreal was free to download, and I’d been a gamer my whole life, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge. I started watching YouTube tutorials and tinkering, eventually building a few tiny prototypes," Dietsch explains.
Those early forays gave him the confidence to tackle something larger—a doomsday cult simulator that fuses survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept, hit a technical wall, and showed the demo to Abbott, who then introduced it to Dooma, the studio that would later become Wolf Haus.
The financial side of the story is equally colorful. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s, providing narrative work for 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 (US$330 million). After that windfall, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire.
Yet a call from his old Hollywood‑Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into development. "I saw the demo Joe had made, and it blew my mind. I couldn’t stay retired," he says.
Wendschuh 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, in turn, 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 funding. The studio began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by a broader industry downturn. Despite the market headwinds, the concept resonated, and after multiple rounds of outreach, CAA (Creative Artists Agency) signed on as their representation.
Their connections helped secure seed investment from Lifelike Capital and Krafton in 2024. Abbott notes that CAA’s backing—alongside advisors with deep gaming pedigrees—was crucial. "Our agent Derek Douglas had represented me for over a decade and previously ran the video‑game department at William Morris. That kind of pedigree opened doors that would have otherwise stayed closed," he says.
What truly sets Join Us apart is the way it’s being built. Wolf Haus operates with just thirteen full‑time staff members, a number most would consider impossible for a game of this ambition. Dietsch emphasizes that the team deliberately kept the roster small to preserve a collaborative atmosphere where every voice matters. To make such a scope feasible, they invested heavily in internal tooling from day one.
"Any system we create must be scalable and debuggable by a single person. We built a robust toolkit that lets us expand features across a massive open world without the project collapsing under its own weight," he explains.
This tool‑first approach consumed a large portion of the first development year, but it laid the groundwork for both Join Us and future Wolf Haus projects. Funding from Krafton and Lifelike has allowed the studio to self‑finance the entire development cycle. "The equity partners gave us the capital to perfect our tools and build the game without external pressure.
We’re now only taking on a modest amount of project finance for marketing purposes," Wendschuh says. This equity model aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the continued development of proprietary tools even if they temporarily slow down feature implementation. When asked about generative AI—a hot topic in game development—both Dietsch and Wendschuh are unequivocal: the studio does not employ AI for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential.
Using AI to generate assets would undermine why we get up every morning to make games," Dietsch states. Wendschuh adds that the only AI they use is for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting.
Krafton, despite branding itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio. The team’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s massive six‑kilometre‑square map and its 15,000 voice lines, all recorded by human actors.
"That level of manual craftsmanship is rare for an indie, but it’s non‑negotiable for us," Dietsch affirms. Dietsch also reflects on the contrast between film and game creation.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, navigating layers of approvals, casting, and studio green‑lights. In games, an inspiration can be prototyped within hours, allowing immediate iteration.
"You can have a concept at breakfast and see it running in the engine by lunch. That immediacy is intoxicating," he says. Wendschuh notes that while film production is heavily front‑loaded—requiring big names to secure financing—games have a lower barrier to entry. "Anyone can pick up a camera and shoot a backyard movie, but without star power, distribution is a gamble.
In games, the gatekeepers are fewer, so a small, talented team can reach a global audience without A‑list talent," he explains. Both founders agree that, at its core, storytelling is the common thread. Whether through a camera lens or a game engine, the goal is to craft an experience that engages, moves, and entertains the audience.
"When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games; it came down to a coin toss and a Christmas camera. I learned programming on a TI‑83, so I’ve always been straddling both worlds. The medium changes, but the desire to tell a story stays the same," Dietsch concludes.
Join Us thus stands as a testament to what a tightly knit, tech‑savvy team can achieve when they blend Hollywood storytelling instincts with indie‑game ingenuity—proving that size, AI shortcuts, or industry pessimism need not limit ambition.