The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator. In the teaser, robed followers charge on pig‑back while firing machine guns, culminating in a shot of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One element that didn’t make the final cut was the infamous "snake gun," a weapon that originated from an off‑hand suggestion by a developer’s child.
Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, recounts how his team quickly turned that whimsical idea into a functional in‑game weapon using a custom scaling tool, completing the prototype in roughly thirty minutes. The result is a bizarre, chaotic gameplay loop that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival title where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style cult.
What makes this project remarkable isn’t just its eccentric premise but the way the studio has approached development. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, explains that the team set out to be "disruptors" by proving that a high‑fidelity, large‑scale game could be built by a handful of developers. "We told everyone we could pull this off with twelve people.
Most people laughed and said it was impossible," Abbott says. Their confidence stems from a background in independent filmmaking, where small budgets often demand creative problem‑solving.
After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving them the financial runway to continue. The founding trio brings deep Hollywood connections. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who now serves as a co‑founder.
Together they 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, a production company originally founded by Chris Roberts before his move to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
These film‑industry pedigrees inform the studio’s cinematic sensibility and its comfort with high‑stakes storytelling. Join Us began as a personal experiment in Unreal Engine. "I discovered Unreal was free to download and started tinkering after watching YouTube tutorials," Dietsch says. Though he had never built a game before, he managed to create a few small prototypes before committing to the cult‑sim concept, which merged his love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics.
He built a proof‑of‑concept demo and presented it to Abbott, who then took it to Dooma, a partner who helped shape the vision further. Dooma Wendschuh, the studio’s CFO and narrative director, transitioned from film production and screenwriting to games in the early 2000s, founding Sekretagent Productions, which supplied writing for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. He later sold a cannabis‑formulation company, Ebbu, for 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 the industry. Wendschuh was instantly impressed by Dietsch’s demo and agreed to join, subsequently bringing on Reid Schneider—former Warner Bros. Games VP—and Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as strategic advisor and CTO respectively.
Securing funding proved challenging amid a market downturn in 2023‑24. The team pitched relentlessly, eventually partnering with CAA for representation, which opened doors to investors and industry veterans. Their seed round, led by Lifelike Capital and Krafton, provided the capital needed to keep development self‑sustaining.
The investors’ equity stakes also meant they were motivated to see the studio succeed, encouraging the team to invest heavily in custom tooling. Wolf Haus’s development philosophy revolves around building robust, scalable tools that a single developer can operate. "If a system exists in the game, it must be debuggable and expandable by one person," Dietsch explains. The first year of production was split between ideating gameplay and constructing the underlying toolset, a strategy that allowed a tiny crew to manage a sprawling open‑world environment without the project collapsing under its own weight.
Funding from Krafton and Lifelike has been used almost entirely to finance the game itself, with a modest portion earmarked for marketing. The equity model aligns the investors’ interests with the studio’s long‑term value creation, granting Wolf Haus the freedom to build tools whenever a technical obstacle arises, even if it slows short‑term progress.
This approach has resulted in a six‑kilometre‑square map that is entirely handcrafted and over 15,000 voice lines recorded by human actors—no generative AI was employed for creative assets. When asked about the role of generative AI, Dietsch is unequivocal: "We don’t use it for any creative work." He acknowledges that the team may use AI‑powered services for mundane tasks like calendar management, but the core development, art, writing, and voice work remain human‑driven.
Interestingly, Krafton—despite branding itself as an "AI‑first" company—insisted that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio. Both Dietsch and Wendschuh note the contrast between film and game production.
In cinema, a concept can sit on a page for years before it receives greenlight, often requiring A‑list talent to secure financing. By contrast, games have a lower barrier to entry; a small team can prototype, iterate, and ship without needing a Hollywood star attached. This democratization allows creators like Dietsch, who grew up programming on a TI‑83 calculator, to bring ideas to life quickly: "You can have an idea in the morning and see it in the engine by afternoon." Ultimately, Join Us reflects a hybrid of Hollywood storytelling and indie‑game ingenuity.
The studio’s modest size, tool‑centric workflow, and refusal to rely on generative AI have enabled them to craft a distinctive, high‑quality experience that feels both cinematic and interactive. As they move toward launch, Wolf Haus hopes the game will prove that a small, passionate team can still push the boundaries of what an indie studio can achieve in today’s competitive market.