The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulator where robed followers ride pigs, unleash a barrage of machine‑gun fire, and ultimately confront colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One of the more memorable, if bizarre, weapons that didn’t make the final cut of the showcase was the “snake gun,” a concept that originated from an off‑hand comment by a team member’s child. As Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, explains, the child asked, “Can there be a snake gun?” Thanks to an in‑house tool that lets the developers rapidly prototype weapons, Dietsch was able to construct a functional snake‑shooting firearm in roughly thirty minutes. The result was a quirky, player‑driven feature that remains in the final game, illustrating the spontaneous, experimental spirit that defines Join Us.
Join Us is an open‑world sandbox survival experience set in a 1970s‑style cult environment. Players can recruit NPC followers or team up with friends in co‑op mode to expand their cult’s influence, manage resources, and survive the chaotic world the game presents. The title’s design philosophy is rooted in a tech‑first approach that enables a small, highly skilled team to deliver a high‑fidelity experience without the massive staff numbers typical of AAA studios.
Michael Abbott, the studio’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: “We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone we could build a full‑scale game with just twelve people, and most people thought we were crazy.” The Wolf Haus founders bring a distinctive Hollywood pedigree to the table. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of famed actor Mel Gibson; together they co‑wrote and co‑directed indie films such as Happy Hunting and Manifest West. Abbott, meanwhile, is the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, a production company originally founded by Chris Roberts before his shift to the Star Citizen universe.
Abbott’s film résumé also includes producing credits on titles like Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. This blend of cinematic storytelling and production know‑how has informed the narrative depth and visual style of Join Us. 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 for as long as I’d watched movies,” he says, “but there was a huge barrier to actually creating something yourself.” By following YouTube tutorials, he built a couple of modest prototypes before deciding to tackle something more ambitious: a doomsday cult simulator that fused his love for survival mechanics with the gritty aesthetic of grindhouse cinema. The initial proof‑of‑concept was deliberately built to test the limits of the team’s technical pipeline, with the expectation that they would soon hit a wall.
When the demo was shown to Abbott, it sparked a partnership that would later involve Dooma Wendschuh, a former film producer and screenwriter turned game industry veteran. Wendschuh’s career trajectory is a microcosm of the cross‑industry talent that now powers Wolf Haus.
After producing narrative content for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins through his company Sekretagent Productions, he founded several tech ventures in the 2010s, most notably a cannabis formulation firm called Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). Following that windfall, he purchased a remote restaurant on a tiny Canadian island, intending to retire.
However, a chance phone call from his old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into the creative world. After reviewing Dietsch’s early game footage, Wendschuh was impressed enough to join the project, later bringing on Reid Schneider—former Warner Bros. Games VP—and Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, an ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as strategic advisor and chief technology officer respectively. Securing financing proved to be the next major hurdle.
The team began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by a broader industry downturn. Despite the challenging market, the concept attracted interest, and after multiple rounds of outreach—including representation by Creative Artists Agency (CAA)—the studio closed a seed round with equity investors Kraftor and Lifelike Capital. Both investors took stakes in Wolf Haus, allowing the studio to self‑fund development while retaining creative control. Wendschuh notes that Kraftor, despite branding itself as an “AI‑first” company, explicitly required that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, aligning with the studio’s philosophy of preserving a human‑centric development process.
Today, Wolf Haus operates with just thirteen full‑time staff members. This lean structure is intentional; the team believes that a small, tightly knit group fosters an environment where every voice matters and each person can directly influence the game’s creative direction. To make a project of Join Us’s scale feasible, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from the outset. “If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person,” Dietsch explains.
By building robust internal toolkits early, the team ensured that as features expanded across the game’s six‑kilometre‑square open world, the underlying architecture would not collapse under its own weight. This tooling‑first mindset also serves future projects, as the same pipelines can be repurposed for new ideas. The funding model further supports this approach.
Because Kraftor and Lifelike’s investments are equity‑based, the studio can allocate resources toward tool development without the pressure of immediate ROI. “Our investors are incentivized to increase the studio’s enterprise value, so they back us in building extensive toolsets,” says Wendschuh.
While this strategy may slow short‑term development, it enables Wolf Haus to maintain its small‑team ethos while delivering a high‑quality product. When asked about the role of generative AI, both Dietsch and Wendschuh are unequivocal: the studio does not employ AI for any creative tasks. “We believe a game should retain a human touch,” Dietsch asserts.
“Using an AI to generate content would defeat the reason we get up every morning—to craft something ourselves.” The only AI usage is limited to administrative functions such as calendar management and email drafting. This stance aligns with Kraftor’s investment conditions and reflects a broader industry debate about AI’s impact on creative jobs. The team has deliberately recorded all 15,000 voice lines with human actors and hand‑crafted every element of the game’s expansive map, underscoring their commitment to artisanal craftsmanship.
Dietsch also highlights a key advantage of game development over film: immediacy. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring scripts, casting, financing, and extensive pre‑production before a single frame is shot. By contrast, a game concept can be prototyped within hours, tested in the engine, and iterated upon in real time.
This rapid feedback loop fuels the studio’s experimental culture, allowing whimsical ideas—like the snake gun—to move from imagination to playable reality almost instantly. While the film industry remains heavily gatekept, relying on star power and studio backing to secure distribution, the gaming landscape offers a more open pathway for creators. “You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to launch a successful game,” Wendschuh notes. “The barriers to entry are lower, and the audience is more directly reachable.” This democratization, combined with the team’s Hollywood storytelling sensibilities, positions Join Us as a unique hybrid that blends cinematic narrative depth with interactive freedom.
In summary, Wolf Haus’s journey demonstrates how a small, interdisciplinary team—bolstered by Hollywood experience, a lucrative cannabis exit, and a commitment to bespoke tooling—can challenge conventional development models. By rejecting generative AI, investing in human‑crafted assets, and leveraging a lean but highly skilled workforce, they are delivering a sprawling, chaotic cult simulator that promises both nostalgic grindhouse thrills and modern sandbox freedom. The result is a testament to what can be achieved when creative ambition meets disciplined engineering, all without the need for a massive staff or cutting‑edge AI shortcuts.