tl;dr: Amazing potential for hardcore survival fans, but unpolished, empty and waiting for updates and features and a very grindy gameplay with little little reward and no room for different styles of play. This has to be the most frustrating game I've played. Not because it outright sucks, but because it has so much potential and flexibility and I love the concept of realistic post-apocalyptic zombie survival. However - the game at version 40 is just so devoid of fun it's unbelievable. Over almost 30 hours and a few plays the gameplay constituted mostly of inventory management, slow, methodical and pointless stomping of zombies and struggling with the cooking interface. Levelling up skills is a slow grind even with supporting traits and books. The wide variety of tools and equipment required combined with their rarity, map size and the conservative play-style the game dictates means it can take in-game weeks for you to even start with most skills, let alone see them be of any use. The lack of any story or even variety in the game means you mostly have to either focus on grinding it out to reach sustainable farming and call it a day, or have a surprise bite kill you in the process. So I decided I suck, and went to watch other people play on Youtube... nope - same pointless grind mostly cut short by glitching stair-zombies or trying anything non-conservative or simply bad luck. Finally I was having consistent issues with lagging at even the minimal settings on my mid-range 5-year old laptop that runs much more demanding games nicely - that definitely didn't help my frustrations.
