The trailer for Join Us first caught the public’s eye 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‑drawn carts, unleash a barrage of machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with an ominous image of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One element that didn’t make the final cut of the trailer was the infamous “snake gun,” a quirky weapon that has become a signature joke among the developers.
Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, explains the origin of the weapon: “One of the team members’ kids asked, ‘Can there be a snake gun?’ We had built a modular gun‑creation tool that lets us spin up new weapons in minutes. In about thirty minutes I had a fully functional snake‑shooting firearm, and the kid was thrilled.
It stuck around in the game because it was that much fun.” That anecdote epitomizes the chaotic, sandbox‑style gameplay that Join Us promises. Players are invited to build and lead a 1970s‑style cult, recruiting both AI followers and real‑world friends in co‑op mode to expand their influence across a sprawling open‑world map.
The game’s design philosophy is rooted in rapid prototyping and a willingness to experiment with absurd ideas, a mindset that has been essential for a studio that aims to punch far above its weight. Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, Michael Abbott, sums up the team’s ambition: “We set out to be disruptors. Everyone told us it was impossible to create a high‑fidelity, large‑scale title with just a dozen developers.
Our background in indie film taught us how to stretch limited resources, so we proved them wrong.” The studio’s journey began with a grueling 80‑pitch marathon before they finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital. Both investors took a stake in Wolf Haus, providing the capital needed to turn the prototype into a full‑blown product. The founders’ Hollywood pedigree played a crucial role in opening doors. 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, meanwhile, is the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, the production company founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to the Star Citizen universe. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. The seed of Join Us was planted when Dietsch began tinkering with Unreal Engine after discovering it was free to download. “I’d been a gamer my whole life, but the barrier to actually creating a game felt huge.
I started watching YouTube tutorials and built a few tiny experiments,” he recalls. Those early experiments evolved into a proof‑of‑concept cult simulator that merged survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—an idea that kept resurfacing in his mind. When the prototype was ready, Dietsch showed it to Abbott, who immediately recognized its potential and introduced it to Dooma, the production arm of Wolf Haus.
Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had previously worn many hats in the entertainment industry, from screenwriting for blockbuster titles to founding a cannabis formulation company that sold for C$430 million. After a brief retirement on a remote Canadian island, a phone call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into the fray. Wendschuh was blown away by the demo and decided to re‑enter game development, bringing on former Warner Bros.
Games VP Reid Schneider as a strategic advisor and recruiting Ubisoft veteran Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand as chief technology officer. Funding proved to be the next major hurdle. The team began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by a broader industry downturn. “People liked what we were showing, but the market was tight,” says Dietsch.
The studio eventually partnered with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) for representation, which helped them secure a seed round from Lifelike Capital and Krafton in 2024. The involvement of seasoned industry veterans at CAA, including agent Derek Douglas—who had represented Wendschuh during his twelve‑year stint in game development—added credibility to the pitch.
Despite the high‑profile backing, Wolf Haus has remained a lean operation, employing only thirteen full‑time staff members. The studio’s philosophy is to keep the team small enough that every voice matters and every employee can directly influence the creative direction. To make such an ambitious project feasible with a tiny crew, Wolf Haus 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 explains.
The first year of development was split between ideating gameplay features and building the internal tools that would allow those features to scale across an open‑world environment without collapsing under their own complexity. The equity‑funded model gave the studio the runway to perfect these tools. Krafton and Lifelike’s investment was used to finance development outright, with the studio only now seeking modest project‑finance for marketing purposes. This structure aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term goal of increasing enterprise value, encouraging the team to continue building reusable tools that can accelerate future projects.
When asked about the role of generative AI—a hot topic in the industry—both Dietsch and Wendschuh were unequivocal: the studio does not rely on AI for any creative work. “We believe a game should have a human touch,” says Dietsch. “We have a few AI subscriptions for mundane tasks like calendar management, but nothing that influences design, art, or narrative.” Interestingly, Krafton, which has publicly positioned itself as an “AI‑first” company, specifically required Wolf Haus to avoid using generative AI in the creative pipeline as a condition of their investment.
This stance mirrors the approach of Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio that publicly declared its independence from AI‑driven content creation. All of Join Us’s assets—its six‑kilometre‑square map and roughly 15,000 voice lines—are handcrafted by human artists and actors.
The team sees this as a core part of their identity, especially as a small indie studio that wants to champion the value of human creativity over automated shortcuts. Dietsch also reflects on the differences between filmmaking and game development. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals from studios, directors, and actors before any footage is shot. In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped within hours: “You can have an idea at breakfast, drop it into the engine, and see it in action by lunch.
That immediacy is intoxicating.” Wendschuh adds that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with massive logistical challenges before a single frame is captured, whereas games have far fewer gatekeepers. “You don’t need an A‑list star or director to get a game funded; the barriers to entry are lower, and the chance of success is higher if you have a compelling experience.” Both founders trace their passion back to childhood. Dietsch recalls wanting to make either movies or games at age six, a decision that ultimately hinged on whether he received a camera for Christmas.
He taught himself programming on a TI‑83 calculator, laying the groundwork for a career that now blends both mediums. “Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re telling a story, creating an experience, and engaging an audience. The tools may differ, but the creative impulse is the same.” Join Us represents the culmination of Hollywood know‑how, indie‑film resourcefulness, and a tech‑first mindset—all executed by a team that refuses to rely on generative AI.
As the game moves toward release, Wolf Haus hopes its unconventional development story will inspire other small studios to dream big, prove skeptics wrong, and remind the industry that a handful of passionate creators can still build expansive, memorable worlds without sacrificing the human element that makes games truly special.