So far so good. Combat falls squarely into the Zomboid experience of "constantly walk backwards while attacking and you'll be fine", although this seems to be only true on the horizontal axis. If you are moving up/down while being chased, they will hit you even while backstepping.
Weapon durability system should be rebalanced, weapons break rather easily, which is fine if you find a lot of weapons all the time but for me, the initial run to the base was basically devoid of weapons which was harrowing...
... Or at least it would have been if Noah's bare hands weren't the best weapon in the game seemingly. Mostly because they don't break. Once I started just going Mike Tyson(well... I'll leave the biting ears part to the Zombies...) on them, it was fairly easy, so long as I was sure that the area behind me was safe to kite.
I also found an absurd amount of canned food on the first excursion out, so hunger and even health was not an issue at all. Well, I found a boat load of everything on the excursion actually, except raw food which I assume would be best for selling to the restaurant. I found two raw steaks once and that was it. Loot placement seemed really thought out, though. Doctor zombies had lots of medical supplies, one of the crashed police cars had a gun in the trunk, stuff like that. While it was kind of weird that it seemed everyone died while on the way to donate to the local food bank(what with the tons of canned food everyone is carrying), overall it was a nice thoughtful loot system.
Weight management seemed a bit restrictive. Having four weapons is nice if you plan to actually use them, but if you've gone full fisticuffs then they really just end up being a burden. I hope there will be ways to enhance the carry capacity in the future.
The town was a little confusing at first. I still really have no idea where anything is except the convenience store and the restaurant. The store clerk mentioned certain items should be sold to certain merchants, but are there any other merchants to sell to besides him and the restaurant? I couldn't find any. Anyways, a town map might be handy as a reminder where everyone is.
As for the characters, I don't know how I feel about the NTR partner being a somewhat timid doctor(?) when Noah seems extremely competent. The demo is very short so I obviously don't know that much about him, but from what I gathered based on the emoji reel playing during the excursion, he's going for some woe-is-me route which feels a bit lame, imo. Unless this guy has a huge cock and Sophie turns out to be a size queen(and Noah didn't seem to be lacking down there, tbh) I'm just a tiny bit skeptical on how the NTR is going to play out. Idk, I'll let you cook but my initial feeling is lukewarm.
Overall it was enjoyable. It's clearly extremely early in development, but it felt really nice to play and the story beats are pleasant enough so far. Oh, also can we introduce a conversation log button maybe? Sometimes when hitting spacebar I accidentally skip a dialogue box and it would be nice to go back and re-read stuff. Also a way to hide the UI during conversations would be nice, mostly for sex scenes.
