The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, giving viewers a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers ride pigs, unleash a barrage of machine‑gun fire, and the climax features colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One of the more memorable, if unexpected, weapons that didn’t make the final cut of the showcase was the "snake gun," a quirky armament that originated from a simple suggestion by a team member’s child. Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, recounted the moment: “A kid on the team asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us spin up a new weapon in about half an hour, so I built it on the fly.
The kid was thrilled, and the snake gun stayed in the game.” That anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us. The title is an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can recruit AI followers or invite friends into a 1970s‑style cult, guiding them through a bizarre, post‑apocalyptic landscape. Yet what truly sets the project apart is the way Wolf Haus has managed to produce a high‑fidelity, content‑rich title with a surprisingly small crew.
Michael Abbott, the studio’s chief operating officer, summed up their philosophy: “We set out to be disruptors. Everyone told us you needed a hundred‑person team to pull this off. We proved them wrong with just twelve core developers.” The team’s confidence stems from a history of doing big things on modest budgets.
Many of the founders cut their teeth in indie filmmaking, where resource constraints are the norm. “We’re used to punching well above our weight,” Abbott explained. After a marathon of roughly eighty pitch meetings, Wolf Haus finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving the studio the financial runway needed to bring Join Us to life. Wolf Haus’s leadership is steeped in Hollywood pedigree.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University in California alongside Louie Gibson—son of actor‑director Mel Gibson—who later co‑founded the studio. Together they co‑wrote and co‑directed the indie features 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 such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. The genesis of Join Us can be traced back to Dietsch’s early experiments with Unreal Engine.
“I discovered Unreal was free to download and started tinkering with it using YouTube tutorials,” he said. Though he had never built a game before, he managed to create a few small prototypes before the cult‑sim concept took hold.
The idea appealed to him because it married his love of survival mechanics, grindhouse cinema aesthetics, and the freedom to blend movie‑style storytelling with interactive gameplay. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming it would soon hit a technical wall. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter recognized its potential and passed it on to Dooma, the studio’s early‑stage partner.
Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, brought a unique blend of film‑writing experience and tech entrepreneurship to the table. Before joining Wolf Haus, Wendschuh wrote for blockbuster franchises such as Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins, and later founded the cannabis‑formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million. After selling Ebbu, 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 the industry. “I was ready to enjoy the beach and walk my dog, but when Joe sent me the demo, it blew my mind and convinced me to come out of retirement,” Wendschuh recalled.
He then introduced the project to Reid Schneider, former Warner Bros. Games VP and now head of Raccoon Logic, who joined as a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With the core leadership in place, the next hurdle was funding—an especially tough challenge given the industry downturn that began in 2023.
The team’s first pitch cycle coincided with a market slump, but they persisted, eventually partnering with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) for representation. Their persistence paid off when Lifelike Capital and Krafton closed a seed round in 2024, providing the capital needed to continue development. The small‑team model forced Wolf Haus to double down on tool creation.
“Every system we build has to be scalable and debuggable by a single person,” Dietsch explained. The studio invested heavily in a custom toolkit early on, allowing them to expand features across a six‑kilometre‑square open world without the project collapsing under its own weight. This tooling‑first approach not only kept the development pipeline lean but also laid the groundwork for future titles.
Funding from Krafton and Lifelike has been equity‑based, meaning the game has essentially been self‑funded. “Our investors care about the studio’s enterprise value, so they encourage us to build robust tools even if it slows short‑term progress,” Wendschuh said. This philosophy aligns with Wolf Haus’s broader stance on technology: they deliberately avoid generative AI in the creative process. “We believe a human touch is essential for games.
Using AI to generate assets would undermine why we love making games in the first place,” Dietsch asserted. While the team does use AI for mundane tasks like calendar management, no creative work—art, writing, or voice‑over—is outsourced to algorithms.
Krafton, despite branding itself as an “AI‑first” company, also insisted that Wolf Haus refrain from using generative AI for core development. This mirrors a broader industry trend where studios, even those owned by AI‑focused publishers, maintain a cautious stance on AI‑generated content to protect creative jobs and preserve artistic integrity.
The commitment to handcrafted content is evident throughout Join Us. The massive map is entirely hand‑built, and the game features roughly 15,000 voice lines recorded by real actors, not synthetic voices. Dietsch emphasized that even as an indie studio, they wanted every auditory and visual element to feel authentic. Transitioning from film to games offered Dietsch a newfound immediacy.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring countless approvals and a massive production pipeline. In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a single morning, inserted into the engine, and instantly visualized. This rapid feedback loop fuels the studio’s iterative design philosophy.
Wendschuh highlighted the differing gatekeeper dynamics between the two mediums. While film still relies heavily on star power and studio backing to secure distribution, games have a lower barrier to entry—no need for A‑list actors or directors to achieve success. This democratization, he believes, makes game development an attractive avenue for creators seeking creative control. Both founders reflect on how their childhood passions converged.
“I was six when I decided I wanted to make movies or games. It was a coin toss—if I got a camera for Christmas, I’d go the film route; if I got a computer, I’d code,” Dietsch reminisced.
He learned programming on a TI‑83 calculator, a skill that later proved invaluable. Ultimately, whether through film or interactive media, the goal remains the same: to craft an experience, tell a story, and engage an audience.
Join Us stands as a testament to what a tightly knit, technically proficient team can achieve without relying on massive staff counts or generative AI shortcuts. By leveraging Hollywood experience, strategic funding, and a heavy emphasis on custom tooling, Wolf Haus is poised to deliver a uniquely bizarre, player‑driven cult simulation that could redefine expectations for indie‑scale development.