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 pig‑mounted vehicles, unleash a barrage of machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with a monstrous, Cthulhu‑like mass of tentacles.
One of the most memorable, albeit omitted, moments features a bizarre "snake gun"—a weapon that literally fires serpents. Joe Dietsch, the chief executive officer and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, explains how that oddity came to life. "One of our team members’ kids suggested a snake‑shooter," Dietsch recalls.
"He asked, ‘Can we make a gun that launches snakes?’ We already had a modular weapon system, so I hacked together a prototype in about thirty minutes. The kid went nuts, and we kept the weapon in the final build." That anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us.
The game is an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can recruit AI followers—or invite friends in co‑op—to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first philosophy, which has allowed a small group of developers to produce a high‑fidelity title that would traditionally require a much larger staff.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, sums up their ambition: "We set out to be disruptors. While everyone assumed you need a hundred‑person studio to build a game of this scope, we believed twelve could do it.
Most people laughed, but we knew indie filmmaking had taught us to punch far above our weight." Indeed, the Wolf Haus founders come from a deep Hollywood background. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who now co‑founders the studio with him. 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, the production company originally founded by Chris Roberts before he turned his attention 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 in Unreal Engine. "Unreal was free to download, and I’d been a gamer my whole life," he says.
"The barrier to actually creating something felt huge, so I started watching YouTube tutorials and experimenting. After a few small prototypes, I kept returning to the idea of a doomsday cult simulator because it fused my love of survival games with grindhouse cinema." He built a proof‑of‑concept prototype, assuming he would eventually hit a technical wall. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, a production partner. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had begun his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s, providing writing services for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
Later, he founded several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation firm Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote restaurant on a tiny Canadian island, intending to retire.
Yet, in true Hollywood fashion, an unexpected call from his old roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into development. "I was ready for beach days and dog walks, but Joe’s demo blew my mind and convinced me to come out of retirement," Wendschuh recounts. He then introduced the project to Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros.
Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, who became a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was financing.
Pitching began in the summer of 2023, a period marked by an industry downturn. "People liked what we were building, but the market was tight," Dietsch says.
The studio enlisted the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) for representation, returned to pitching in 2024, and eventually secured seed funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both taking equity stakes. Wendschuh believes the CAA connection— which also represents titles like 007: First Light—was crucial, as were veteran advisors like Schneider and Chartrand.
"My longtime agent Derek Douglas, who once headed the video‑game department at William Morris, helped open doors," he notes. Despite the pedigree, Join Us is being crafted by only 13 full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the team deliberately kept the roster small to preserve a collaborative atmosphere where every voice influences the creative direction. To make such an ambitious project feasible, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling early on.
"Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single developer," he explains. "We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across an open world without the project collapsing under its own weight. The first year was as much about building those tools as it was about designing the game itself." The funding structure also gave the studio the runway needed to perfect those tools.
Krafton and Lifelike’s equity investment was used to self‑fund development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing. "Because our investors own equity, they’re motivated to see the studio increase in value, which means they support our tool‑building ethos," Wendschuh says. "Whenever we encounter a problem we can’t solve, we build a tool for it. It may slow us down in the short term, but it enables a tiny team to deliver a large‑scale experience." When asked about generative AI, the team is unequivocal: they do not rely on it for creative work.
"We believe a human touch is essential. Using AI to generate content would defeat the purpose of why we love making games," Dietsch states. Wendschuh adds that while the studio uses AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, it plays no role in art, design, or narrative creation.
Interestingly, Krafton—publicly positioning itself as an "AI‑first" company—insisted that Wolf Haus not employ generative AI in the creative pipeline. This mirrors a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio, which publicly denied using AI for its projects.
Both companies appear intent on preserving traditional creative jobs, from voice actors to artists. Dietsch confirms that the six‑kilometre‑square map in Join Us is hand‑crafted, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human performers. Dietsch also reflects on the contrast between film and game development.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and extensive pre‑production. In games, an inspiration can be prototyped the same day, allowing immediate iteration.
"You can have a concept in the morning, drop it into the engine, and see it in action right away. That immediacy is exhilarating," he says. Wendschuh notes that film production is front‑loaded with intense, high‑stakes set work and heavy reliance on a few marquee names to secure financing. By contrast, the video‑game landscape has fewer gatekeepers; a small indie can reach a global audience without A‑list talent.
"You don’t need a Hollywood star to sell a game," he observes, "the medium itself levels the playing field." Both founders agree that the core creative drive—telling stories and delivering experiences—remains the same across mediums. "When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games. It boiled down to a coin toss and whether I got a camera for Christmas," Dietsch laughs.
"I learned to program on a TI‑83, so I’ve always been torn between the two. Ultimately, whether it’s a film or a game, you’re crafting an experience, a narrative, an emotion for the audience. The tools may change, but the purpose stays constant."