I must admit I'm not disappointed with the state of this one so far. At first when Electro talked me into buying this one I was like; "Oh no, not another early access free roam zombie survival, but this one is actually very cool so far.
Early access means not all game play elements are in by a long shot, but what is there has good depth to it, often half hidden. I like how your body physique gets influenced by what you do and eat all the time. Food doesn't instantly affect you, you'll need to wait until it digests in your intestines before you see your calories and nutritional values go up (including every single vitamin etc.) When you eat a lot of fat food you gain weight, which affects your running speed. So there is a difference to living off well cooked balanced meals or eating the fat meat of the bear you've shot for the entire week. It is well balanced though, you don't need to micromanage if you don't want to, you'll just end up being a bit slower runner, but not to the extend where it's lethal or anything like that. As long as you eat, drink , rest (and poop and pee) in time you'll be all right in general.
Weapons are in depth too, you start off with finding two rocks to make a sharp rock knife, but you can also find military grade weapons while scavenging. The weapons are realistic, bolt action rifles can be loaded by hand with the proper ammo, but semi automatics need the correct ammo clip, where some can get a single round chambered, if they can in real life. There are heaps of objects, clothing etc to be found. Bullets can be crafted but you'll need to find the correct components.
There's quite a bit inventory management, all sorts of clothing, backpacks etc not only have a specific amount if inventory slots (with a certain shape), but also a specific weight limit. Also, some objects have a specific thing it can hold (a military boot for example has inventory space too, but you can only hold a knife in it)
What crafting is there needs quite a bit of scavenging, and you'll need several elements to make something, and sometimes also have a choice what material to use (instead of one regular rope being able to use 2 pieces of handmade bark fiber rope, or 4 ends of electrical wire you've found for example)
Death means losing everything, and losing 'fame points'. You build up fame points by killing stuff, chopping trees, basically staying alive over time. If you die, you can spend those fame points on respawning, for example 25 points for a random respawn, more points for spawning in a specific sector, even more for spawning on your team mate, or a lot for spawning at a shelter you can build. You currently can also build boxes that will hold your loot in a persistent way, but you'll have to hide them so no one else finds them off course. If you don't have enough enough fame points you cant use certain respawn options, but the basic random respawn alwaus costs fame points as well, so your points can go into the negative. Staying alive is not overly hard though once you get some equipment, and are tactical and careful, but the zombies ARE dangerous, and a pack of them certainly lethal, though a fast zombie catching you by surprise can be lethal as well.
Also, all effects are over time. If you're bleeding, you'll have time to kill what attacked you, unpack your pack of clean rags (or perhaps even find some clean clothes to rip up and make some) and bandage yourself in a safe place. If you have a vitamin C shortage, it won't kill you, however, if you have it for weeks on end you might start losing teeth due to scorbut, which will effect how fast you can chew your food. That kind of stuff.
The map is large, 12 x12 km, so 144 square km. Plenty of towns around, military camps, mountains, woodlands, lakes, farmlands, and it looks the part. I'm liking it so far