The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers zip around on pigs, fire machine guns, and eventually confront colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One detail that didn’t make the final cut was the infamous "snake gun," a weapon that originated from a spontaneous idea by a developer’s child. According to Joe Dietsch, CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, the youngster asked, "Can there be a snake gun?" Leveraging a rapid‑prototyping tool, Dietsch whipped up a functional snake‑shooting firearm in roughly thirty minutes.
The quirky weapon survived the development process and remains a playable feature, illustrating the kind of off‑the‑wall gameplay Join Us promises. Join Us is an open‑world sandbox survival title set in a 1970s‑style cult environment. Players can recruit AI followers or invite friends into co‑op sessions, building a bizarre community that balances dark comedy with survival mechanics.
The game’s design philosophy mirrors the studio’s broader approach: lean, tool‑driven, and deliberately disruptive. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed it up succinctly: "We wanted to be disruptors.
We told everyone we could build a AAA‑level experience with just twelve people, and they thought we were insane." Their confidence stemmed from years of experience in low‑budget, high‑impact creative work, especially in independent film, where small crews routinely punch far above their financial weight. Before securing any external capital, the Wolf Haus team endured an arduous 80‑pitch marathon, eventually winning the backing of Krafton and Lifelike Capital. Both investors took equity stakes, allowing the studio to retain creative control while accessing the resources needed for a high‑fidelity production.
The founders’ Hollywood connections run deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of actor Mel Gibson, and the two co‑wrote and co‑directed the indie features Happy Hunting and Manifest West. Abbott, the son of renowned makeup artist Larry Abbott, helped launch Ascendant Pictures—originally founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to the Star Citizen project—and later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
These pedigrees gave Wolf Haus a unique blend of cinematic storytelling and production savvy. The genesis of Join Us can be traced back to Dietsch’s early experiments with Unreal Engine. He recalls the moment he downloaded the free engine and began learning through YouTube tutorials, despite having no formal game‑development background.
After creating a couple of modest prototypes, he returned to a concept that fascinated him: a doomsday cult simulator that merged survival gameplay with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, expecting it to hit a technical wall quickly.
When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter recognized its potential and introduced it to Dooma, a partner who helped refine the vision. Key to the studio’s rapid progress was the involvement of Dooma Wendschuh, who transitioned from a film‑producer and screenwriter to a game industry veteran in the early 2000s.
Wendschuh 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 (about $330 million USD). 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.
Impressed by Dietsch’s demo, Wendschuh joined the project, bringing on Reid Schneider—former Warner Bros. Games VP and current head of Raccoon Logic—as a strategic advisor, and recruiting Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. Funding the venture proved challenging amid a broader industry downturn in 2023.
Initial pitches generated interest but no commitments, prompting the team to enlist Creative Artists Agency (CAA) for representation. After a second round of pitches in 2024, Lifelike Capital and Krafton finally provided a seed round.
Wendschuh credits CAA’s clout and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for opening doors that might otherwise have remained closed. Despite the high ambitions, the studio has remained intentionally small—13 full‑time staff members at the time of writing. Dietsch emphasizes that this size fosters a collaborative environment where every voice matters and each team member can directly influence the creative direction. To make such a large‑scale 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 developer," Dietsch explains. The first year of development was split between ideation and building the underlying toolset, a strategy that not only kept the project on track but also laid the groundwork for future titles.
The equity‑funded model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools without the pressure of short‑term revenue targets. Krafton and Lifelike’s capital covered the entire development cost, allowing the studio to self‑fund the game.
While a modest amount of project finance is being used for marketing, the core development remains fully backed by the equity partners. This arrangement aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the continued investment in proprietary tools despite the occasional slowdown in feature delivery.
In an industry increasingly obsessed with generative AI, Wolf Haus deliberately avoids using AI for creative work. Dietsch states plainly, "We don’t use any generative AI.
The human touch is essential to our process." Wendschuh adds that AI tools are limited to administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting, never to content creation. Interestingly, Krafton—publicly positioning itself as an "AI‑first" company—insisted that Wolf Haus refrain from AI‑driven art or narrative work as a condition of their investment, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio. The studio’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s massive six‑kilometre‑square map and its 15,000 voice lines, all recorded by human actors. Dietsch believes that preserving a fully human pipeline is vital, even for an indie‑scale project, to maintain artistic integrity and protect creative jobs.
Comparing film and game development, Dietsch highlights the immediacy of the latter. In film, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring extensive pre‑production, casting, and studio approval.
In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped within hours, allowing creators to iterate instantly in the engine. Wendschuh notes that while film production is front‑loaded with high‑stakes negotiations for star talent and director attachment, games face fewer gatekeepers. "You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to greenlight a game," he says, emphasizing the democratizing potential of interactive media.
Both founders trace their passion back to childhood: Dietsch recalls wanting to make games or movies at six, ultimately receiving a camera for Christmas and learning programming on a TI‑83 calculator. He concludes that regardless of medium, the core mission remains the same—crafting experiences, telling stories, and engaging audiences. This shared creative impulse fuels Wolf Haus’s ambitious journey, proving that a small, determined team can produce a large‑scale, high‑quality game without relying on generative AI, massive budgets, or industry conventions.