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 clip, robed followers charge on pig‑back, firing machine guns before the screen fades to a monstrous, Cthulhu‑like mass of tentacles.
What didn’t make the final cut 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 that the idea came from a junior team member’s child, who simply asked, “What would a snake‑gun look like?” Using an internal rapid‑prototyping tool, Dietsch whipped up a functional snake‑shooting weapon in roughly thirty minutes, delighting the kid and cementing the weapon’s place in the final product. That anecdote captures the chaotic, sandbox‑style gameplay that Join Us promises.
Players will lead a 1970s‑inspired cult, recruiting both AI followers and real‑world co‑op partners to expand their influence across an open‑world map. The game’s design philosophy is heavily rooted in the studio’s tech‑first mindset, which has allowed a high‑fidelity experience to emerge from a remarkably small development team.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: “We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone we could build a AAA‑level experience with just twelve people, and most people laughed.” The team’s confidence wasn’t baseless. Many of the founders come from indie‑film backgrounds where they learned to stretch minuscule budgets into ambitious productions.
“We’re used to punching far above our weight,” Abbott notes. After a grueling 80‑pitch marathon, Wolf Haus finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took a stake in the studio. The founders’ Hollywood connections run deep. 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 is the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, the production company founded by Chris Roberts before he turned his attention to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx, further cementing the studio’s cinematic lineage. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine. “I discovered that Unreal was free to download and started tinkering with YouTube tutorials,” he recalls.
Though he had no formal game‑development background, he managed to release a couple of small titles before deciding to tackle something far grander: a doomsday cult simulator that fused survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept prototype, hit a technical wall, and showed the demo to Abbott, who then introduced it to Dooma, the studio’s early backer. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s chief financial officer and narrative director, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s. He founded Sekretagent Productions, providing narrative services for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
Later, he launched several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis‑formulation company Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million (≈$330 million USD). After that windfall, Wendschuh bought 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 industry.
After watching a demo of Join Us, he was convinced to re‑enter game development. Wendschuh recruited industry veterans to solidify the team: Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros Games and now head of Raccoon Logic (the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet), joined as a strategic advisor, while Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, became chief technology officer. With the core leadership in place, the studio turned its attention to funding.
Pitching began in summer 2023, a period marked by a broader industry downturn. Despite the challenging climate, the team’s persistence paid off, and by 2024 they closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. The partnership with CAA—Creative Artists Agency—proved instrumental. Derek Douglas, Wolf Haus’s agent at CAA, had previously represented Wendschuh during his twelve‑year stint in game development and had headed the video‑game department at William Morris.
This high‑profile representation opened doors and added credibility during the fundraising process. What truly sets Join Us apart is its production model: a full‑time staff of just thirteen people.
Dietsch emphasizes that the small‑team approach was intentional: “We wanted everyone to have a voice, to touch the creative, and to feel ownership of the final product.” To make such an ambitious open‑world game feasible, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from day one. “If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single developer,” Dietsch explains.
The first year of development was therefore split between designing gameplay concepts and building the internal tools that would later enable those concepts to scale across a six‑kilometre‑square map. The funding structure also allowed the team to perfect these tools without the pressure of tight deadlines. Krafton and Lifelike’s equity investments funded the entire development cycle, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing.
This equity‑first model aligns investors’ interests with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the team to keep building reusable tools even when it temporarily slows feature implementation. When asked about the role of generative AI—a hot topic in the industry—both Dietsch and Wendschuh were unequivocal: the studio does not employ AI for creative work. “We believe a human touch is essential for games,” Dietsch says. “Using an AI to generate assets would defeat the purpose of why we love making games.” Wendschuh adds that the only AI tools they use are mundane productivity aids for calendar management and email drafting.
Interestingly, Krafton, which has publicly positioned itself as an “AI‑first” company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline as a condition of their investment. This mirrors a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio. The commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio.
The entire six‑kilometre‑square environment is manually built, and the 15,000 voice lines are recorded by human actors, not synthetic voices. Dietsch stresses that preserving this level of artisanal detail was a core value, even for an indie‑scale project. Dietsch also reflects on the differences between film and games.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring countless approvals and the involvement of high‑profile talent. By contrast, a game concept can be prototyped within hours, allowing immediate iteration. “You can have an idea this morning, drop it into the engine, and see it in action by lunch,” he says. Wendschuh notes that while film production is heavily front‑loaded with pre‑shoot logistics, games benefit from fewer gatekeepers, making it easier for small teams to achieve commercial success without A‑list names.
Ultimately, both mediums share a common creative impulse: telling stories and delivering experiences. Dietsch recalls his childhood fascination with both cameras and calculators, noting that whether one pursues movies or games, the goal remains the same—to engage an audience, convey a narrative, and spark emotion.
Join Us embodies that philosophy, merging Hollywood’s storytelling flair with the interactive freedom of modern gaming, all while proving that a tiny, tool‑centric team can deliver a sprawling, high‑quality experience without leaning on generative AI.