The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulation. In the preview, robed followers charge on pig‑back while brandishing machine guns, culminating in a shot of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the cut, according to Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—was the infamous snake gun.
"One of the team members’ kids suggested, ‘What if there was a snake gun?’" Dietsch recalls. "We had a modular weapon system, so in about thirty minutes I built a gun that actually fires snakes.
The kid went wild, and we kept it in the final build." That anecdote encapsulates the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op—to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also highlights Wolf Haus’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a small crew to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger staff.
"We set out to be disruptors," says Michael Abbott, the studio’s COO. "We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred people; twelve is enough.’ Most people laughed at us." The team’s confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where they learned to achieve big results on shoestring budgets. After roughly eighty pitch meetings, Wolf Haus finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving the studio the financial runway to continue development.
Wolf Haus’s founders are steeped in Hollywood pedigree. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of actor‑director Mel Gibson; 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 started by Chris Roberts before his shift to Star Citizen.
Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine.
"Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt the barrier to creating one was huge," he explains. He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, built a few tiny prototypes, and eventually gravitated toward a doomsday‑cult survival concept that merged his love of grindhouse cinema with game mechanics.
He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, expecting to hit a technical wall at some point. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter recognized its potential and presented it to Dooma, a production partner.
Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had previously worked as a screenwriter and producer before moving into games in the early 2000s, contributing writing to titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Wendschuh later founded several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation firm Ebbu, which sold for 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. "Joe showed me a video of his game and it blew my mind," Wendschuh says, prompting him to join the effort. He then recruited Reid Schneider—formerly a VP at Warner Bros.
Games and now head of Raccoon Logic—and Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as strategic advisor and chief technology officer respectively. Funding proved challenging amid a market downturn that began in 2023. The studio pitched repeatedly, eventually signing with CAA in Los Angeles and re‑approaching investors in 2024. Their persistence paid off when Lifelike Capital and Krafton closed a seed round, providing the capital needed to expand the team to thirteen full‑time staff.
Wolf Haus’s development philosophy centers on tool‑building. "If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," says Dietsch.
The first year of development was split between designing gameplay and engineering a suite of in‑house tools that would let a tiny team manage an open‑world map without the project collapsing under its own weight. This tooling approach also aligns with the equity‑funded model: Krafton and Lifelike’s investment is used directly to finance the game, allowing the studio to retain creative control while slowly adding project‑finance for marketing later. 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," Dietsch states.
"We have a few AI subscriptions for mundane tasks like calendar management, but nothing that influences design, art, or writing." Krafton, despite branding itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid 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. All of Join Us’s assets are handcrafted.
The six‑kilometre‑square map was built by hand, and the game features roughly 15,000 voice lines recorded by real actors—an effort the team deemed vital for an indie title that wants to feel authentic. Dietsch notes a key advantage of game development over film: immediacy. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring green‑lights, A‑list talent, and studio approval. In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a single morning, inserted into the engine, and instantly visualized.
"You can see your idea the same day you think of it," he says, describing the exhilaration of rapid iteration. Wendschuh adds that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with extensive pre‑production negotiations to secure high‑profile directors or actors before a studio will fund a project.
While anyone can technically shoot a movie with a backyard camera, breaking through without marquee names or distribution is rare. Games, however, have fewer gatekeepers; a small team can reach a global audience without needing A‑list talent. Both mediums, though, share a common creative impulse: storytelling and immersive experience.
"When I was six, I wanted to make games or movies—it was a coin toss," Dietsch reflects. "I learned to program on a TI‑83, so I’ve always loved both.
Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re trying to give someone an experience, tell a story, and engage them. That core purpose doesn’t change."