The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulator where robed followers zip around on pigs, fire machine guns, and eventually confront massive, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One quirky detail that didn’t make the final cut was the infamous snake gun, a weapon that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was born from a child’s off‑hand suggestion.
"My teammate’s son asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’" Dietsch recalls. "Because we had built a modular weapon system, I could prototype it in about thirty minutes. The kid went wild, and we kept the snake gun in the final build." This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival game that lets players recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style doomsday cult. It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first philosophy, which has allowed a tiny team to deliver a high‑fidelity experience that would normally require a much larger staff.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, describes the team’s mindset as deliberately disruptive. "We told everyone we could build a AAA‑level title with just twelve people.
Most people laughed and called it impossible," he says. Their confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where small crews routinely punch far above their weight.
After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took a stake in Wolf Haus. The founders’ Hollywood connections run deep.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, the 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 his move 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 blocked by the cost of entry for creating my own," he explains. He taught himself through YouTube tutorials, built a few modest prototypes, and eventually settled on the idea of a doomsday cult simulator—a mash‑up of survival mechanics and grindhouse cinema that could serve as a unique intellectual property bridging his film and gaming passions. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo and showed it to Abbott, who then presented it to Dooma, a partner studio.
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, contributing writing to titles such as Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Wendschuh later founded several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million. After a brief retirement on a remote Canadian island, a call from his old Hollywood‑hills roommate Michael Abbott lured him back into the industry. Wendschuh introduced the project to Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros.
Games vice president now heading Raccoon Logic, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet. Schneider recruited former Ubisoft Montreal programmer Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand as chief technology officer, completing the core leadership team. Funding proved challenging amid a market downturn.
The studio began pitching in summer 2023, initially receiving polite interest but little commitment. After partnering with CAA in Los Angeles and re‑pitching in 2024, they finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh credits the CAA connection—whose roster includes titles like 007: First Light—and the presence of seasoned veterans such as Schneider and Chartrand for opening doors. Despite the high‑profile backers, Join Us remains a hyper‑small operation, employing only 13 full‑time staff members.
Dietsch stresses that the team deliberately kept the roster lean to preserve a collaborative atmosphere where every voice influences the creative direction. To make such an ambitious open‑world game feasible with a tiny crew, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from day one.
"Every system must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch notes. "We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a massive map without the project collapsing under its own weight." The first year of development was therefore split between designing gameplay concepts and constructing the internal tools that would later enable rapid iteration. The equity financing model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools. Krafton and Lifelike’s capital financed the entire development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing.
"Equity partners want the studio to increase its enterprise value, so they encourage us to invest in tooling," says Wendschuh. "Whenever we hit a problem we don’t know how to solve, we build a custom tool. It may slow us down short‑term, but it lets a tiny team deliver a game of this scope." When asked about generative AI, the team is unequivocal: they do not employ it in the creative pipeline. "We believe a human touch is essential," says Dietsch.
"Using AI to generate assets would defeat the purpose of why we love making games every morning." Wendschuh adds that the only AI they use is for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting. Krafton, despite branding itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required that Wolf Haus refrain from using generative AI in the game's creation, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio.
The studio’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio. The six‑kilometre‑square map is entirely hand‑built, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, not synthetic voices. This decision reflects a broader philosophy that values the labor of creative professionals and resists the displacement fears associated with AI. Dietsch also contrasts the immediacy of game development with the protracted timelines of filmmaking.
In cinema, an idea can take years to reach a set, requiring approvals, casting, and financing before any footage is shot. By contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a single morning, tested in the engine, and iterated upon instantly. Wendschuh observes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense, high‑stakes set work that depends on securing a handful of A‑list talent to greenlight a project. While anyone can technically shoot a low‑budget film with a backyard camera, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare.
Video games, however, have far fewer gatekeepers; a small indie can achieve commercial success without celebrity involvement. Both mediums, though, share a core creative impulse: storytelling and experience design. "When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games—it came down to a coin toss and whether I got a camera for Christmas," Dietsch reflects.
He taught himself programming on a TI‑83 calculator, illustrating a lifelong blend of visual storytelling and technical curiosity. "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 goal doesn’t change across media." Join Us thus stands as a testament to what a small, tightly knit team can achieve when they combine Hollywood know‑how, savvy tech development, and a clear artistic vision—without leaning on generative AI.
The game promises a wild, satirical ride through cult‑building, complete with snake‑shooting guns, pig‑mounted cultists, and a hand‑crafted world that reflects the creators’ passion for both cinema and interactive entertainment.