The buzz around Join Us first erupted when its trailer appeared in the Xbox Showcase back in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulation. The teaser showed robed followers charging on pigs while spraying machine‑gun fire, culminating in a nightmarish vision of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. Yet the most memorable moment for many was the appearance of a snake‑shooting weapon – a detail that didn’t make the final edit of the showcase. Joe Dietsch, the chief executive officer and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, explains the origin of that oddball armament.
“One of the developers’ kids asked, ‘What would a snake gun look like?’ We had a modular weapon system that lets us prototype quickly, so within half an hour I built a gun that fires snakes. The kid went wild, and we kept it in the final build.” This anecdote encapsulates the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style doomsday cult. The game’s design philosophy mirrors the studio’s broader approach: lean, tool‑centric, and deliberately disruptive.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, says the team set out to prove that a high‑fidelity title does not require a hundred‑person roster. “We told everyone we could pull this off with twelve people. Most people laughed and called it impossible. We had to show them otherwise.” Their confidence stems from a background in low‑budget indie filmmaking, where crews routinely punch far above their weight.
After eighty pitches, the studio finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving Wolf Haus the financial runway to bring Join Us to life. The founders’ Hollywood lineage runs deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of famed actor 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, a production house founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to the Star Citizen universe.
Abbott’s film résumé includes producing the Jamie Foxx‑led action drama Fight for ’84. Join Us began as a hobby project in Unreal Engine.
“Unreal was free to download, and I’d been a gamer and movie‑buff forever, but the barrier to actually making something felt huge,” Dietsch recalls. He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, eventually churning out a few modest prototypes before committing to a larger vision: a survival‑driven cult simulator that fused grindhouse cinema aesthetics with interactive gameplay. The proof‑of‑concept was rough but promising. Dietsch expected to hit a technical wall early on, but when he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter recognized its potential and presented it to Dooma, a strategic partner that helped refine the concept.
Another key player, Dooma Wendschuh, serves as Wolf Haus’s chief financial officer and narrative director. Wendschuh’s career started in Hollywood as a producer and screenwriter before he pivoted to game development in the early 2000s, founding Sekretagent Productions, which supplied narrative work for titles such as Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
In the 2010s he launched several tech ventures, most notably Ebbu, a cannabis formulation company that sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After selling Ebbu, he bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Retirement, however, was short‑lived. “One day my old roommate Michael Abbott called out of the blue and said a friend had made a video game,” Wendschuh says.
He watched Joe’s demo, was blown away, and decided to step back into the industry. He recruited Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros.
Games and now head of Raccoon Logic (the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet), as a strategic advisor, and brought on Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a veteran Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. Funding proved to be the next hurdle. The studio began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by a broader industry downturn.
Initial outreach yielded interest but no commitments. After signing with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) in Los Angeles, Wolf Haus relaunched its pitch campaign in 2024 and eventually 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 that might otherwise have stayed shut. Despite the high‑profile backing, the development team remains remarkably small: thirteen full‑time staff members.
Dietsch emphasizes that the limited headcount is intentional, fostering an environment where every voice matters and each contributor can touch both creative and technical aspects of the game. To make such an ambitious project feasible, the studio invested heavily in internal tooling from day one. “If a system can’t be scaled or debugged by a single person, it becomes a bottleneck,” he explains. The first year of development was split evenly between ideating gameplay features and building the underlying tools that would keep the open‑world map from collapsing under its own weight.
The equity‑funded model gave Wolf Haus the breathing room to perfect those tools. “Krafton and Lifelike’s investment is essentially the game’s budget,” says Wendschuh. “We’ve used that capital to self‑fund development, only turning to external project finance for marketing later on.” This structure aligns investor incentives with the studio’s ethos: build reusable tools, solve problems in‑house, and retain creative control.
When asked about generative AI, the team’s stance is unequivocal: they do not employ it for any creative tasks. “We believe a game needs a human touch,” Dietsch says. “Using AI to generate assets would undermine why we get up every morning to make games.” Wendschuh adds that while the studio may use AI‑powered services for mundane tasks like calendar management, none of those tools touch the artistic side of development. Interestingly, Krafton, which has publicly positioned itself as an “AI‑first” company, specifically required that Wolf Haus refrain from using generative AI in the creative pipeline.
This mirrors similar statements from Krafton‑owned Neon Giant, which also denied employing AI for its projects. The 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.
“Even as a tiny indie, we felt it was crucial to keep the human element,” Wendschuh notes. Dietsch reflects on the contrast between filmmaking and game development.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and massive budgets before a director ever sees a shot. In games, the feedback loop is almost instantaneous: an idea conceived at breakfast can be dropped into the engine and visualized within hours. That immediacy fuels the studio’s rapid iteration culture. Wendschuh points out that while film production is front‑loaded with high‑stakes negotiations for star talent and studio green‑lights, game development is comparatively democratized.
“Anyone can rent a camera and shoot a backyard movie, but without big names or distribution, the odds of success are slim. In games, the barriers are lower; you don’t need an A‑list actor or director to reach an audience.” Both mediums, however, share a core creative impulse: storytelling and immersion.
Dietsch’s childhood dream of making either movies or games hinged on a simple coin toss and a Christmas camera. He learned programming on a TI‑83 calculator, blending technical curiosity with narrative passion.
“Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re trying to give someone an experience, tell a story, and engage them. The tools change, but the goal stays the same.” Join Us thus stands as a testament to what a small, tightly knit team can achieve when they combine Hollywood know‑how, entrepreneurial savvy, and a relentless focus on building the right tools—without leaning on generative AI. The result is a sprawling, hand‑crafted cult simulator that promises both chaotic fun and a fresh perspective on indie game development.