It is hard to judge how much I enjoyed this game. On one hand, the game feel is solid. The sound design is very satisfying and the feeling of using the revolver with the screen zoom, aim reticule, and the recoil feels very smooth. The upgrade system was pretty fun, once I figured out what was worth upgrading. It is an interesting mechanic to be encouraged to leave the home base to scrounge for extra resources, but having to always be ready to rush back to defend your crops. I like the concept of tying thirst and health together, made for a very tense mechanic appropriate for a small game like this. I liked being able to pull enemy aggro just by pointing the gun at them; it added an interesting risky option to help me defend the base.
On the other hand, there were many frustrations that ate at me throughout the experience. The kick input is very awkward; it could stand to allow a larger window between the two right clicks or ideally just dedicate another button to it. I had a bit of a conveyance issue on my initial playthrough when I thought I was doing damage, but it was just the enemies flashing red from presumably muzzle flare? There were mildly annoying technical issues throughout; mainly losing focus on the game window whenever I used middle mouse click (I eventually swapped to reloading with "R") and when transitioning to a new day. I would have swapped to the downloaded version, but I tried both 1.0.0 and 1.0.2 on my Windows 10 machine and the mouse sensitivity was far too low and seemingly unchangeable. It is frustrating how fragile every structure is. Crops only take 2 hits to die, and defending them is made even more annoying by the fact that there's friendly fire. Bait and barriers felt like traps to upgrade since they would only stop one or two attacks. Maybe that's fine, with how short the game is. What isn't fine is the gunmen. Extra range makes them strong enough; they don't need more damage. With the combo of large, fast moving ranged projectile, 2 damage, and worst of all piercing shot they easily destroy the ENTIRE field of crops you've been growing with one shot. They ought to at the very least make a louder and more unique sound from other enemies so you know they're coming. Getting blindsided by them multiple times felt quite unfair and very nearly put me off from finishing the game.
Some exploits:
-extra ammo does not seem to reset between lives. I could collect 8 ammo packs, reset the game and still start with 8 ammo packs.
-I was free to use night time to collect ammo and break open cacti for water since fatigue doesn't tick during that time. Maybe that's intended.
The core of the game is very good and definitely appeals to me. With the limited resources there was always a feeling of living on the knife's edge which I figure is what you were going for. It feels like it could be easily expanded if you wanted to do so. Even as it is now, it would only take a couple tweaks for me to be fully satisfied by it. Great work!