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 zip around on pigs, unleash a barrage of machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with an ominous vision of gigantic, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One element that didn’t make the final cut was the infamous "snake gun," a quirky weapon that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was born from a simple suggestion by a team member’s child. "His son asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that lets us scale weapons in minutes, so I whipped up a snake‑gun in about half an hour.
The kid went wild, and the weapon stuck around in the final build," Dietsch recalls. This anecdote encapsulates the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival game where players can recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult empire. The game’s development philosophy mirrors that spirit. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, describes the studio’s ambition as a deliberate attempt to disrupt conventional game‑making assumptions.
"We told ourselves, ‘We don’t need a hundred‑person crew; twelve talented people can deliver a high‑fidelity experience.’ Everyone else thought we were dreaming," he says. Their confidence stems from a background in low‑budget, high‑impact indie filmmaking, where punching above one’s weight is the norm.
After 80 pitch meetings, the studio finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which now hold stakes in Wolf Haus. The founding trio’s Hollywood pedigree runs deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who co‑founded Wolf Haus and 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 his transition to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. This blend of cinematic experience and entrepreneurial grit laid the groundwork for their foray into interactive entertainment. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine.
"I discovered Unreal was free to download and started tinkering with YouTube tutorials. I’d loved games forever, but the perceived barrier to creating something felt huge.
Unreal lowered that barrier," he explains. Despite no formal training, Dietsch built a few modest prototypes before committing to a larger vision: a doomsday cult simulator that fused survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, shared it with Abbott, and the duo presented it to Dooma, a publishing partner that helped shape the project’s early direction.
Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s chief financial officer and narrative director, brings a unique blend of film and tech experience. He began as a producer and screenwriter before founding Sekretagent Productions, a writing house that contributed narrative content to titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
In the 2010s he launched several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis‑formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After the sale, Wendschuh purchased a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire.
Yet, a sudden call from his old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into the creative arena. After reviewing Dietsch’s demo, Wendschuh was convinced and re‑entered the industry, eventually recruiting former Warner Bros.
Games VP Reid Schneider as a strategic advisor and Ubisoft Montreal veteran Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand as chief technology officer. Funding proved to be a steep climb, especially amid an industry downturn that began in 2023.
The team’s initial outreach generated interest but not capital. After signing with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles, they refined their pitch and returned to investors in 2024, ultimately closing a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh credits CAA’s influence and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for opening doors that might otherwise have remained closed. What truly sets Join Us apart is the scale of the project relative to the size of the team—just 13 full‑time staff members.
Dietsch emphasizes that the studio entered the endeavor with a crystal‑clear understanding of scope and a commitment to preserving a small‑team culture where every voice matters and each person can touch the creative core. To make such an ambitious title feasible, Wolf Haus invested heavily in custom tooling early on. "If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single developer.
We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across an open world without the project collapsing under its own weight," Dietsch explains. The first year of development was therefore split between ideating gameplay and constructing the underlying tools that would sustain future expansion. The equity‑funded model gave Wolf Haus the runway needed to perfect these tools.
"Krafton and Lifelike’s capital financed the entire development. We’re now only seeking modest project finance for marketing, but the core game was built entirely with their investment," says Wendschuh. This arrangement aligns investor incentives with the studio’s ethos: building robust, reusable tools that solve problems in‑house, even if that approach slows short‑term progress. The payoff is a game that can be crafted by a lean team without sacrificing quality.
In an era where many studios tout generative AI as a shortcut, Wolf Haus deliberately steers clear of it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential. Using AI to generate core content would undermine why we love making games," Dietsch asserts.
Wendschuh adds that the only AI they employ is for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting. Interestingly, Krafton—publicly positioning itself as an “AI‑first” company—insisted that Wolf Haus not rely on generative AI for game creation, echoing similar statements from Krafton‑owned Neon Giant. The studio’s commitment to handcrafted artistry extends to the game’s world and audio.
The six‑kilometre‑square map in Join Us is entirely hand‑built, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, not synthetic voices. Dietsch stresses that preserving this human element was non‑negotiable, even for a modest indie project. Comparing film and game development, Dietsch notes the immediacy of interactive media. In film, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring countless approvals before a director ever sees it on set.
In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a single morning, placed into the engine, and visualized instantly. Wendschuh observes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense, high‑stakes set work and a reliance on securing A‑list talent to greenlight a project. While anyone can shoot a backyard movie, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare.
Games, however, have far fewer gatekeepers; a small team can release a successful title without celebrity involvement. Both mediums, according to Dietsch, share a core creative impulse: storytelling and experience design. He grew up torn between making movies and games, ultimately learning programming on a TI‑83 calculator and receiving a camera for Christmas.
Whether through pixels or film frames, the goal remains the same—to craft an engaging narrative that resonates with an audience. Join Us embodies that philosophy, blending the absurdity of cult cinema with the interactivity of modern gaming, all while proving that a tiny, determined team can deliver a massive, high‑quality experience without leaning on generative AI.