I had a fairly epic episode playing the full version last night, that I thought I'd share if anyone wanted to get juiced about this game.
By far my most successful character, Tony Swafford the construction worker lived 13 days and 16 hours before being overtaken by a horde of zeds in the upstairs arsenal of the police station (I'm playing the community map mod available on the PZ forums) during the night.
It was interesting and encouraging to see a new dimension of suffering added to my character's short post-apocalyptic career, than made it all feel much more absorbing that a common shoot-em-up/ resource scavenging grind. Which is nice.
The first three or four days he spent in a mad rush about town in search of a proper weapon (at last, the shotgun was uncovered somewheres) and eventually barricading supplies to fortify a safehouse. After getting squared away, boredom began to creep in while the barricaded doors held off the zeds. He hacked down his own barricades to get back out into the fray, and restock on canned foods. The following week or so was a drunken blur after discovering a well-stocked pub next door, as he lost sight and hope drinking his predicament into a bottle. Life was pretty stable for this period - after waking up in the safehouse, he'd stumble next door, hacking a shambler or two on the way to the bar, empty a few bottles of spirits, and stumble back completely smashed, taking pot shots at zeds on his merrily chagrined walk back into the safehouse to sleep. Life was good, if meaningless for a time.
But late in the second week, ammunition was running out and his head cleared. He undertook exploring the town in search of caches or better living arrangements before finding the police station, with a well-stocked arsenal tucked away upstairs. This became home for a day or two, when Tony fell sick from eating some rotten food.
The timing of the zed hordes couldn't have been planned this well; it was late in the night, and having just returned from a scavenging foray, Tony was very tired and already seeing in tunnel vision from his sickness. Downstairs, the sound of shattering glass heralded the arrival of an innumerable horde of zombies, headed up the stairs for his blood.
He loaded the shotgun and pumped away at the mass of undead until the stairs and floor were littered two deep with the bastards, but still they kept coming. Spent shells would have been smoking faintly from the floor as he grabbed fresh ones by the fistful out of his pockets. Now utterly exhausted and mentally in shock, his dampened awareness limited his vision in dark of nighttime to a thin sliver, and soon even lifting the gun became an insufferable challenge. The barrel must have been white hot.
Then the bites began to come. A bite on the shoulder, then one on the wrist, then another zed from behind caught him off guard. Dropping the shotgun he pulled out his machete to hack them away, and yet more emerged from the stairwell to replace the fallen.
At some point he couldn't fight anymore, and the soiled blade fell from his weary fingers. Blood seeped from innumerable wounds...vaguely he could perceive his life fading when things went black, as they got him at last.
Forgive that RP tangent, but all of these events did happen and added some much appreciated depth to an otherwise straightforward game. I really like the way psychological and physical stress change the way you have to play, in order to survive.
The game should only get more interesting as it develops from here. Lifetime license is only 8 bucks, I'll call it a deal.