The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers ride pigs, fire machine guns, and confront colossal Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One quirky element that didn’t make the final cut was the "snake gun," a weapon that shoots serpents. According to Joe Dietsch, CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, the idea came from a team member’s child. "His son asked, ‘Can there be a snake gun?’ We had a modular weapon system, so I threw together a snake‑shooting gun in about thirty minutes.
It blew his mind and it stayed in the game," Dietsch recalls. That anecdote captures the chaotic, sandbox‑style gameplay Join Us promises: an open‑world survival experience where players can recruit followers—or other players in co‑op mode—to a 1970s‑style cult.
It also illustrates 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 COO, summed up their ambition: "We wanted to be disruptors.
We told everyone we could build a AAA‑quality game with just twelve people. Most people thought we were crazy." The team’s confidence stems from a background in low‑budget, high‑impact projects. "We come from indie film,” Abbott says, “and we’re used to punching well above our weight." After 80 pitches, Wolf Haus finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in the studio. Wolf Haus’s founders have deep Hollywood connections.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who later co‑founded the studio and co‑wrote and co‑directed the indie films 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 he moved on to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
The genesis of Join Us traces back to Dietsch tinkering with Unreal Engine. "Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge.
I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a few tiny prototypes," he explains. Though he had no formal game‑dev experience, Dietsch eventually settled on a doomsday cult simulator because it merged his love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, showed it to Abbott, and Abbott presented it to Dooma, a partner studio. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s.
He founded Sekretagent Productions, which supplied narrative work for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later he launched several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, 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 development. Impressed by Dietsch’s demo, Wendschuh recruited former Warner Bros.
Games VP Reid Schneider as a strategic advisor and hired Ubisoft veteran Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand as chief technology officer. Funding proved challenging amid a broader industry downturn. The team began pitching in summer 2023, received positive feedback but struggled to close deals.
After partnering with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) and re‑pitching in 2024, they finally secured a seed round from Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh credits the CAA relationship—and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand—for opening doors. Despite the high ambitions, Join Us is being built by only 13 full‑time staff. Dietsch emphasizes that the small‑team culture ensures everyone has a voice and can directly influence the creative direction.
To make such a scope feasible, the studio invested heavily in custom tools early on. "Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," he says. The first year of development was split between ideating gameplay and building the internal toolset that would keep the open‑world project from collapsing under its own weight. The equity funding model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect those tools.
Krafton and Lifelike’s investment was used to self‑fund the game’s development; only a modest amount of project finance is being sought for marketing. "Equity partners want the studio to increase its enterprise value, so they support us in building extensive tooling," Wendschuh notes. "Whenever we hit a problem we can’t solve, we build a tool. It may slow us down short‑term but it enables a tiny team to deliver a large‑scale experience." When asked about generative AI, Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not employ it for creative work.
"We believe a human touch is essential. Handing development over to an AI would defeat the reason we get up each morning," he says.
Wendschuh adds that the only AI they use is for mundane tasks like calendar management and email replies. Interestingly, Krafton, which has branded itself as an "AI‑first" company, specifically required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio. The commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio. The six‑kilometre‑square map was built manually, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors—a point the team considers vital, even for an indie‑scale project.
Dietsch reflects on the contrast between filmmaking and game development. In film, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring approvals, casting, and studio green‑lights.
In games, an idea can be prototyped within hours and instantly visualised in the engine. This immediacy excites him: "You can have an idea in the morning, drop it into the engine, and see it come to life right away." Wendschuh observes that film production is front‑loaded with high‑stakes negotiations for a few marquee names, whereas games face fewer gatekeepers. "Anyone can rent a camera and shoot a backyard movie, but without big names or distribution it’s hard to break through. In games, the barriers are lower—you don’t need an A‑list actor or director to succeed." Both founders agree that storytelling is the core driver, regardless of medium.
Dietsch recalls that as a child he wanted to make either movies or games, and a simple coin toss and a Christmas camera set his path. He learned programming on a TI‑83 calculator, blending his twin passions. "Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience. That fundamental goal never changes."