Thanks for the great feedback!
I can definitely see your point on starting with a weapon. Part of it was the theme idea, original original pass was you’d get extra campers and they’d be the ones auto-using weapons for you, then it was going to be like little item fairies, either way to start you off alone, isolated, and scared, then see how much easier surviving is (rather quickly) with a friend.
I think some more clear communication might make the idea still work - I still think as an in-built tutorial it’d be nice to have people learn moving around and tossing wood into the fire first, then learning to defend themselves isn’t a bad idea. Whatever direction I take it, this was definitely not the way I wanted to bring players in 😅
The slingshot starting with passthrough was an accidental bug, decided to leave it that way to keep things from getting too hard. Completely agree it makes a way better upgrade!