Join Us wastes little time in letting me know how silly things are about to get. Shortly after navigating its cultist creator and adorning my robes in a brightly colored yellow, white, and green checkerboard pattern, selecting a flying saucer as my cult’s icon, and insisting everyone refer to each other as a number, is when I set my expectations for hilarity – and was not disappointed.

Join Us has all the markings of an ambitious indie that, on the surface, describes itself as sandbox survival game, but it feels much deeper than that. The 10-person team at Wolf Haus Games has seemingly kept throwing ideas at the wall and instead of rejecting them, found ways to make them work. Want to ride a deer? Sure. What if we had aliens? Yes. Want to drive a forklift? Of course you do. And that’s a big part Join Us’ charm, is giving you a wide range of methods to both enjoy your time in the game’s world and ways for your party of cultists to infiltrate the local populace.

Exiting the cultist creator screen, I soon found myself in a large outdoor compound with dozens of fellow cultists adorned in my colors, all in a synchronized dance, guiding me to a makeshift obstacle course to get a feel for the controls and a test of my indoctrination – shooting a pig (or not) at the behest of our great Leader. I’m then sent to the House of Business (a barn) to receive my orders: travel to the nearby county of Bedford and spread the good word of our little cult. And by spreading the good word, we mean violently.

Bedford is incredibly rural, surrounded by wilderness, military bases, an abandoned circus, and rusted cars. This is also home to the start of our own little compound, located just outside of town, featuring a variety of followers already on-site, pounding drums, caring for chickens, and harvesting tomatoes. It isn’t long until the locals arrive to take offense to our presence by rushing in guns blazing.

Combat was one of the central focuses of my hands-on time with Join Us, giving us a sample of the variety of weapons you can use in the game, ranging from pistols to machine guns and serrated machetes. Cycling through weapons was a breeze and combat felt pretty good for the current state of the demo build — it has good bones and will no doubt see some further refinement leading up to its full release next year.

After we took care of the invaders in an extremely bloody battle, I then conscripted other cultists in our compound to pile into a white van and drive over to the nearby farm to take out the rest of these ruffians while “Cielito Lindo” was playing on the radio – there are a half-dozen radio stations to cycle between while driving vehicles, because of course there are (the wall, remember?).

Once we arrived at the enemy farm, I looted a nearby weapon cache that uncovered a grenade launcher, flame thrower, and chainsaw – that’s when the chaos really started to unfold as we began to put these enemies out to a bloody pasture. It wasn’t long until the flurry of explosions and hail of bullets attracted the attention of the local police who arrived on the scene and immediately opened fire on us – even a police helicopter arrived – and really laid into my character until he was toast. That was the end of Number 14. My cult was gone, or so I thought…

You know all those cultists back at the compound? If your playable character is killed off, you’ll switch over to any surviving follower to continue your game. You can even swap into the body of any nearby cult member at any time, even during combat, with the long-distance swaps functioning like a cult-powered form of fast travel.

Join Us also features permadeath, meaning the poor sap I was playing who got caught up in the hail of bullets back at the farm, is gone forever from the game. Now in a newfound body with a desire to spread our cult’s influence even further, I hit the road and explore more of the vast surrounding area.

One such stop included a small neighborhood where I walked up to and converted more of the local populace – this not only increases my cult’s following but gives me some additional respawn options should I fall victim to another round of bullets. Pulling this off required influence that can be obtained by putting flyers up all over town, handing out personalized autographs from our Leader, or just threatening them to death.

Soon I had a half-dozen new followers adorned in a matching wardrobe, who hilariously ran over to the nearest vehicle, hijacked it, and drove to the compound – which left me without a set of wheels, leaving me to walk all the way back to the compound. Unfortunately, I passed by a police station on the way back home and thus was a swift end to Number 53.

There’s much more to Join Us than dispatching a bit of ultra-violence and exploration. Their official channels mention base building, farming, indoctrination of members, domesticating animals, and aliens. It’s all over the place – but that’s part of its charm. Wolf Haus wants to give you one of the wildest and weirdest sandboxes for you to play in and it seems like they’re well on their way in doing so. Consider myself indoctrinated.

Look for Join Us to launch in 2027 for XBOX Series X|S, XBOX on PC, cloud and included with Game Pass. Play it on both console and PC at no additional cost with XBOX Play Anywhere.