I liked the character selection and instructions, though I felt there was a lot of information thrown at you very quickly. If I hadn't seen the development of this it would have felt like information overload. Perhaps the user could have clicked to continue through each part? I loved the zombies in the town at the beggining of the instructions though!
The journal entries and map updates are excellent and I found myself really engaged with what others had written. The map was good also, although I didn't initially see where on the map was meant to be my character so marked something on the map a bit further north than intended. Perhaps an undo button in case - like me - you manage to screw it up?
The zombies themselves didn't seem to cause much bother except I couldn't get into one area so went somewhere else. I can imagine that to fully explore someone will have to sort these out.
I didn't use the crafting (successfully) at all but I'd love to see what could be made. Future play-throughs of this would probably yield better results on the crafting front I imagine.
I love that all of these small pieces paint a bigger, more intriguing picture!