I didn't dink with the sandbox mode for more than 30 mins. (Partially because I pretty much got screwed immediately on starting.)
No idea how much of this will be cleaned up in the full version TBR soon but....
Customization options are pretty basic at this point. 4 skin tones, two face models.
Five or six professions, the ones you'd expect mostly. Cop, Security Guard, Fire Fighter, Park Ranger, Construction Worker.
The traits are....well, not really balanced as I see it yet. To buy any additional traits you have to take negative traits, and you have to take substantial negative traits (from a survival perspective) to buy any of the helpful ones. So like, light drinker gives you two points to spend....but the cheapest positive trait right now costs 3. You could make three by also taking clumsy....but for 1 point, making more noise while you move around sounds like a death sentence.
So all in all the traits and such for sandbox, in this pre-release, seem very basic. Like the system just got in place.
They've added a clothing slot for jeans, shoes and a shirt. I assume maybe armor might go there at some point.
Rain now makes you damp, which makes you run slower and possibly catch a cold. That's a huge bitch.
Didn't really see much else in the time I spent with it. I made two guys and both had mega-hordes waiting right outside their spawn point. I think they said something about the zombie spawns being borked in this version.
So all in all.....if the full release is just a cleaned up version of this, I don't know if I'm exactly satisfied. There's no random map generation so far and that is really killing my ability to replay this much at all. Then again it's not like I have some deadline they need to meet. Really they need to start focusing on the sandbox aspect full-time, because it feels like this whole Kate and Baldspot thing is ultimately taking time away from the mode that everyone is wanting to play. So my reaction to that nice art work and hiring a writer is kind of mixed.