Summary - We go hands-on at XBOX Games Showcase 2026 with the darkly humored Join Us, an upcoming open world sandbox game that has you creating and managing your very own cult. - Combat was the central focus of our demo, sampling a variety of weapons you can use in the game, ranging from pistols to machine guns and serrated machetes. - Join Us launches March 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.

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 p...