The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulator. In the clip, robed followers zip around on pigs, unleash a barrage of machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with a nightmarish vision of Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
One element that didn’t make the final cut was the infamous "snake gun," a weapon that originated from a simple suggestion by a team member’s child. Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, recounts the moment: “A kid asked if we could make a gun that shoots snakes. Because we had built a flexible weapon‑creation tool, I could prototype it in about thirty minutes.
The kid went wild, and the snake gun stayed in the game.” That anecdote encapsulates the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises. The title is an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates Wolf Haus’s technology‑first philosophy, which has allowed a small, twelve‑person team to deliver a high‑fidelity product that would normally require a much larger staff.
Michael Abbott, the studio’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: “We wanted to be disruptors. Everyone told us you need a hundred people to pull this off.
We proved them wrong.” The founders lean heavily on their Hollywood backgrounds to punch above their weight. 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 company founded by Chris Roberts before his move to the Star Citizen universe. Abbott also produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
This cinematic pedigree gave the team a comfort with storytelling and a willingness to take big creative risks on a shoestring budget. Join Us was born when Dietsch began tinkering with Unreal Engine after discovering that the software was free to download. “I’d loved games forever, but the barrier to actually building something felt huge,” he explains. “I started watching YouTube tutorials, built a few tiny prototypes, and then the cult‑survival idea kept resurfacing because it married my love of grindhouse cinema with the survival‑game loop.” He built a proof‑of‑concept demo and showed it to Abbott, who then presented it to Dooma, a partner studio that helped with early development.
The financial side of the venture was equally unconventional. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had a career that spanned film production, screenwriting, and video‑game writing for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. In the 2010s he founded several tech companies, including the cannabis‑formulation firm Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million).
After cashing out, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. A sudden call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into game development when he saw Dietsch’s demo and was “blown away.” He then recruited former Warner Bros. Games VP Reid Schneider as a strategic advisor and hired Ubisoft Montreal veteran Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand as chief technology officer.
Securing capital proved challenging because the pitch cycle began in the summer of 2023, a period marked by a broader industry downturn. The team made roughly 80 pitches before landing seed investment from Kraftor and Lifelike Capital, both of which took equity stakes in Wolf Haus.
Their representation by CAA (Creative Artists Agency) – the same agency that handles titles like 007: First Light – and the presence of seasoned veterans such as Schneider and Chartrand were instrumental in convincing investors. What truly sets Join Us apart is the way it is being built. Wolf Haus operates with only 13 full‑time staff members, a deliberate choice to keep the development environment intimate and collaborative. “Everyone has a voice, everyone touches the creative, and you feel like this is a game made by a specific group of people,” says Dietsch.
To make such an ambitious open‑world title feasible with a tiny crew, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from day one. "If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch notes.
The first year of development was split between ideating gameplay and constructing the internal toolset that would later allow the world to expand without collapsing under its own weight. Funding from Kraftor and Lifelike has been structured as equity, meaning the investors are motivated to increase the studio’s enterprise value. This arrangement gave Wolf Haus the freedom to spend time perfecting tools rather than rushing to market.
"Whenever we encounter a problem we don’t know how to solve, we simply build a tool to address it," Wendschuh explains. "It may slow us down in the short term, but it enables a small team to deliver a game of this scope." In an industry where many studios tout generative AI as a shortcut, Wolf Haus has deliberately avoided it.
Dietsch states unequivocally, "We don’t use any generative AI in the creative process. The human touch is essential to what we do." Wendschuh adds that the only AI services they employ are mundane productivity tools for calendar management and email drafting.
Interestingly, Kraftor—despite branding itself as an "AI‑first" company—insisted that Wolf Haus not rely on generative AI for game creation, echoing a broader reluctance among some Korean publishers to embed AI into core development pipelines. The commitment to handcrafted content is evident throughout Join Us.
The six‑kilometer‑square map is entirely hand‑built, and the game features roughly 15,000 voice lines recorded by real actors, not synthetic voices. Dietsch emphasizes that even as a modest indie studio, they consider these human‑generated assets a non‑negotiable part of the experience. Comparing his film background to game development, Dietsch highlights the immediacy of the latter.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and location logistics before a director ever sees a frame. In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a single morning, placed into the engine, and visualized instantly.
This rapid feedback loop fuels the studio’s creative energy and keeps the team motivated day after day. Wendschuh observes that film production is heavily front‑loaded: securing a high‑profile director or star is often the gatekeeper to a green‑light. While anyone can technically shoot a low‑budget movie with a handheld camera, breaking through without marquee names or a distribution deal is rare.
Video games, however, have far fewer gatekeepers; a small team can reach a global audience without needing A‑list talent. This democratization is a key factor behind Wolf Haus’s confidence in delivering Join Us as an indie‑sized operation with a blockbuster‑level ambition. Both Dietsch and Wendschuh agree that the core motivation behind any storytelling medium—whether film or interactive entertainment—is the same: to craft an experience that moves, entertains, and engages the audience.
Dietsch reflects on his childhood, recalling a coin toss that could have sent him down either a filmmaking or game‑development path. "I learned to program on a TI‑83, I got a camera for Christmas, and I’ve loved both worlds ever since. The goal is always to tell a story and give people something memorable," he concludes.