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 ride pigs, unleash machine guns, and ultimately confront colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One detail that didn’t make the cut was the infamous "snake gun," a weapon that emerged from a spontaneous idea by a developer’s child. Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, recounted the moment: the youngster asked, “Can there be a snake gun?” Thanks to an in‑house tool that lets the team prototype weapons in minutes, Dietsch whipped up a functional snake‑shooting gun in roughly half an hour. The quirky weapon remains in the final game, exemplifying the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay Join Us promises.
Join Us is an open‑world sandbox survival experience set in a 1970s‑style cult. Players can recruit NPC followers or invite friends in co‑op mode to expand their bizarre congregation. The game’s design philosophy mirrors the studio’s technical approach: achieve high‑fidelity, large‑scale content with a remarkably small crew. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed it up: “We wanted to be disruptors.
We told ourselves we could build a AAA‑ish title with just twelve people, and everyone else called us crazy.” Their confidence stems from a background in low‑budget indie filmmaking, where they learned to “punch above their weight.” After 80 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 connections run deep.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who later co‑founded Wolf Haus and co‑wrote and co‑directed the indie movies Happy Hunting and Manifest West. Abbott is the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, the production company originally founded by Chris Roberts before his shift to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
These cinematic roots inform the studio’s storytelling sensibility and its willingness to experiment with genre‑blending concepts. The seed of Join Us sprouted when Dietsch began tinkering with Unreal Engine, attracted by its free download model.
He explains, “I’d loved games forever, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge. I started watching YouTube tutorials, built a few tiny prototypes, and eventually the idea of a doomsday cult simulator kept resurfacing. It combined survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema, merging my two passions into one IP.” He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assumed it would soon hit a technical wall, and showed it to Abbott, who then introduced it to Dooma, a production partner.
Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s chief financial officer and narrative director, entered the picture after a varied career spanning film production, screenwriting, and video‑game writing. He founded Sekretagent Productions, contributing narrative work to 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 roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After cashing out, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire.
Yet a call from his former Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back. He watched a demo of Join Us, was “blown away,” and decided to re‑enter the industry. Wendschuh then recruited Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros.
Games vice‑president now heading Raccoon Logic (the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet), as a strategic advisor. Schneider brought on Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, formerly a programmer at Ubisoft Montreal, to serve as chief technology officer. With this core team assembled, the next hurdle was funding—an especially tough task amid the industry downturn of 2023‑24. The studio initially pitched independently, later partnering with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) in Los Angeles to refine their pitch deck and re‑approach investors in 2024.
Their persistence paid off with seed financing from Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Abbott notes that CAA’s representation, which also covers titles like 007: First Light, and the presence of seasoned veterans such as Schneider and Chartrand, were instrumental in convincing investors. "Derek Douglas, our agent at CAA, had been my agent during my twelve‑year game‑making career and previously led the video‑game department at William Morris," Abbott adds. Despite the high ambitions, Join Us is being built by just 13 full‑time staff members.
Dietsch emphasizes that the small‑team mentality was intentional: “We wanted everyone to have a voice, to touch the creative process, and to feel that the game is a product of this specific group.” To make such a scope feasible, the studio devoted a substantial portion of the first development year to building robust, scalable tools. "If a system exists in the game, it must be debuggable and extendable by a single developer," Dietsch explains.
"We invest heavily in toolchains so that when features proliferate across an open‑world map, the project doesn’t collapse under its own weight." The equity‑funding model gave Wolf Haus the breathing room to perfect these tools. Krafton and Lifelike’s capital funded 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 build extensive tooling," says Wendschuh. "Whenever we encounter a problem we don’t know how to solve, we build a custom tool.
It may slow us down in the short term, but it enables a tiny team to produce a game of this magnitude." When asked about generative AI, the team draws a clear line. Dietsch states unequivocally, "We don’t use generative AI for any creative work. The human touch is essential to us; handing development over to an algorithm would defeat the purpose of why we get up each morning." Wendschuh adds that the only AI services they employ are mundane productivity tools for calendar management and email drafting, not content creation. Interestingly, Krafton—publicly positioning itself as an "AI‑first" company—insisted that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio.
The team’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio. The six‑kilometre‑square map was manually designed, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, not synthetic voices.
"We felt that preserving authentic human performance was crucial, even for an indie title," Dietsch notes. Dietsch also reflects on the contrast between filmmaking and game development. In film, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring extensive approvals and the involvement of high‑profile talent. By contrast, a game idea can be prototyped in a single morning, inserted into the engine, and instantly tested.
This immediacy fuels his enthusiasm for interactive media. Wendschuh observes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense, short‑term bursts of activity, whereas games benefit from fewer gatekeepers—no need for A‑list actors or directors to secure a green light.
Both founders agree that the core creative impulse—telling stories and delivering experiences—remains the same across mediums. Dietsch recalls that as a child he wanted to make either movies or games; a coin toss and a Christmas camera set him on the path to programming on a TI‑83. That early fascination has evolved into a career that bridges cinematic narrative and interactive design, culminating in Join Us, a game that marries cult‑themed satire with sandbox freedom, all built by a lean, Hollywood‑infused team that chose human craftsmanship over AI shortcuts.