In my experience, and I will say it is in an Official PvE server so for you PvP people take this for what you will, this game is like a mix of DayZ minus the zombies, and games like Tarkov the extraction and looter shooters, some have stories this game as far as I can tell does not. The Safe zones of which there are 2 in the world you can use as your base or extraction point/zone if you will. Safe zones have two different types of traders, one deals in weapons and related gear and the other deals in medical supplies, food and some other supplies, inside the safe zones you can lay down sleeping bags to use as respawn points and there is storage that is independent between the 2 safe zones, also there are workbenches for repairing gear.

Outside of safe zones there is also a slight, albeit shallow, survival element to the game. You have to monitor and keep up with hunger and thirst, you can do that by hunting and fishing or looting for food and water you can find by looting or in wells dotted around the map. Personally I would like to see in the future your character getting hot/cold with a weather system rain and snow and heavy storms maybe and more in depth injures ( these things may be in the roadmap but I honestly haven't looked yet ). You can hunt deer, and duck and fish for food and you can build a campfire to cook it of course but, if you want to settle down outside of a safe zone you can build a base.

Base building is pretty simple compared to most games in this genre but is surprisingly still fairly deep. Starting off there is only one type of building piece and you build the base version with branches and go up from there. ! Be warned that there is a resource requirement for daily upkeep ! I would like to see in the future more building pieces and ways to orient pieces. ( like I said earlier I haven't looked at the roadmap yet so these things may already be on there. ) there's also a decent assortment of interior furnitures you can build to help make life in game over all easier. Starting off you need scrap metal to make a lot of the workbenches, and it is used to gain rep with traders, but you need a Metal Planer to break things down into scrap metal and it goes from there. After you build your building the crafting aspect will surprise you with how fairly deep it is after a shallow building experience.

Game play overall is pretty good, I do run into issues with hit registration at times and I'm still dialing in the bullet drop and target lead, which to me seem somewhat inconsistent but could just be skill issue lol. Loot seems to be consistent and decent for the area and or b.s you had to put up with to get to. character movement overall feel good, though jumping and vaulting, which has to be done with 2 different keys depending on the height, can feel janky at times. Guns feel good and they feel like they have some decent weight and punch to them, though I will say gun play overall could be better and more sim like in my opinion but that may not be what the devs are going for. The map size feels good though it could probably use slightly more variation in terrain and biome but still looks really good and doesn't really get old or tiring to traverse.

!! Please Devs adjust the Ai !!
These are my 2 biggest and noticeable complaints and cons of the game.
1. As soon as I fire a shot they turn instantly to exactly where I am and know right where I'm at even at a decent distance.
2. The Ai chase you for far too long if you did not and are not actively aggro'ing them. Example being just running down the street trying to recover my body and I have been chased for over 1km by a group of Ai from a building I ran past in the woods.

I did skim over quite abit that this game has to offer but I tried to give a quick ( though it doesn't seem it lol ) overview of the major points of the game. If you read the whole thing, Thank you and I hope this helps you decide whether or not to buy the game.

Overall I will say if you are looking for a slimmed down but still fairly deep survival base building game that relies on looting, and ( at least in my experience ) has a really good community for a game like this, then even at full price this game is worth the money and personally I'd rather support smaller studios anyways.

Fun asf, cannot wait for the games development and the exiting updates to come. Only thing the game suffers from is player pop. As long as you find a packed server your good. Just wish more players actually played. I would highly recommend. I have way more hours in DayZ and I cannot say I like DayZ more (even tho I have wayyyyy more hours in DayZ and have been playing for like a decade almost)... Deadside is a perfect blend between rust and DayZ imo.

fun game so far