The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulator. In the preview, robed cultists ride pig‑mounted platforms, unleash a barrage of machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with an image of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the cut, according to Wolf Haus Games’ CEO and creative director Joe Dietsch, was the infamous "snake gun" – a weapon that literally fires serpents.
"One of the team members’ kids suggested, ‘What if there’s a snake gun?’" Dietsch recalls. "We had a modular weapon system, so in about thirty minutes I built a gun that shoots snakes. The kid was blown away, and the weapon stayed in the final build." This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival game where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style cult.
It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled a small group of developers to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger staff. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: "We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred people; twelve is enough.’ Most people thought we were crazy." Their confidence stems from a history of achieving big results on modest budgets.
"We come from indie filmmaking, where you learn to punch well above your weight," Abbott says. After 80 pitches, the team finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in Wolf Haus. The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs 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 his transition 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 Engine was free to download, and I’d always loved games," he explains. "It felt like there was a massive barrier to entry for creating something, so I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a few small prototypes." Though he lacked formal training, Dietsch quickly moved from tiny experiments to a full‑blown proof of concept centered on a doomsday cult simulator—a concept that blended his love of survival games with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He presented the demo to Abbott, who then took it to Dooma.
Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before shifting to games in the early 2000s, contributing writing to titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. In the 2010s he founded several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis‑formulation firm Ebbu, which later sold for C$430 million (about $330 million USD). After that windfall he bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, planning a quiet retirement.
But the Hollywood habit of being pulled back into creative work resurfaced. "I got a call out of the blue from my old roommate Michael Abbott in the Hollywood Hills. He said, ‘A buddy of mine has made a video game.’ I looked at Joe’s demo, and it blew my mind, so I came out of retirement," Wendschuh recounts. He introduced the project to Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros.
Games and current head of Raccoon Logic, who became a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With a core team forming, the next hurdle was financing—particularly challenging during the industry downturn of 2023‑24. "People liked what we were building, but the market was tough," Dietsch says.
The studio enlisted Creative Artists Agency (CAA) as representation and continued pitching throughout 2024, eventually closing a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Abbott believes the CAA connection, along with veteran advisors like Schneider and Chartrand, was crucial. "Derek Douglas, our CAA agent, was also my agent when I was making games for twelve years and previously ran the video‑game department at William Morris," Abbott notes.
Despite the high‑profile backing, Join Us is being built by just 13 full‑time staff members. "We entered the project knowing exactly what we wanted to achieve," says Dietsch, emphasizing the studio’s desire to keep a tight‑knit culture where every voice matters and everyone can contribute creatively. To make a game of this scope possible with a small crew, Wolf Haus invested heavily in internal tooling from the outset.
"Every system must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains. "We spent the first year simultaneously designing gameplay and building the tools that would let us expand the open world without the project collapsing under its own weight." The equity financing model gave the team the runway to perfect these tools. "Krafton and Lifelike’s investment has essentially self‑funded the game," Wendschuh says.
"We’re now using a bit of project finance for marketing, but development has been covered entirely by their equity stakes." One of the most striking aspects of Wolf Haus’s approach is its deliberate avoidance of generative AI in the creative pipeline. When asked, Dietsch gave a concise answer: "We don’t use any generative AI.
The human touch is essential to us; handing development over to an algorithm would defeat the purpose of why we get up in the morning." Wendschuh adds that the studio only employs AI tools for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, never for art, design, or writing. Even Krafton, which publicly positioned itself as an "AI‑first" company, insisted that Wolf Haus stay clear of generative AI for creative work. "Our investors wanted to be sure we weren’t building a game with AI‑generated assets," Wendschuh notes, echoing a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio. The team’s commitment to handcrafted content is evident in the game’s six‑kilometre‑square map, which was built entirely by hand, and the 15,000 voice lines recorded by human actors.
"That level of human involvement mattered to us, even as a tiny indie," Dietsch says. Dietsch also highlights a key difference between filmmaking and game development: immediacy. In film, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring approvals, casting, and a lengthy production schedule.
In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a single morning, inserted into the engine, and instantly visualised. "You can see it, you can touch it, and that instant feedback is exhilarating," he explains.
Wendschuh points out that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense, high‑stakes set work and a reliance on securing a handful of marquee talent to greenlight a project. While anyone can technically shoot a backyard movie, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare.
By contrast, the gaming landscape has fewer gatekeepers; a small team can reach a global audience without A‑list actors or directors. Both founders agree that the core creative impulse—telling a story, delivering an experience, and engaging an audience—remains the same across mediums.
"When I was six, I wanted to make either games or movies. It boiled down to a coin toss and whether I got a camera for Christmas," Dietsch reflects. "I learned to program on a TI‑83, so I’ve always loved both. Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re crafting an experience and a narrative, and that doesn’t change." Join Us therefore stands as a testament to what a small, tightly‑focused team can achieve when they blend Hollywood storytelling sensibilities, indie‑film resourcefulness, and bespoke technology—without leaning on the shortcuts of generative AI.
The result is a richly detailed, chaotic cult simulator that promises players a uniquely hands‑on, human‑crafted adventure.