STALKER but set in a weird alternative Europe with kobolds, freaky robomutants, and supernatural weirdness? Instantly my thing, without a doubt.
I know this is a very, very early demo, but this is a solid base for building on. The map is varied and interesting. There's several cool factions and a lot of fun worldbuilding already in play. A heavy amount of content for something so early too. Plenty of basic quests to get your feet wet with. Not to mention, a huge variety of weapons to toy with. I was expecting to barely have anything available, but you clearly wanted to have every base covered. The fact there's no only base weapons of each category, but also variants with unique components and capabilities is really cool. And lots of enemies to experience, especially on the mutant front! Mostly unique too, each with their own quirks.
I particularly like switching the STALKER style hunger system to being merely a boost to speed rather than being something you have to deal with or risk dying. Especially given this is a much harsher game on the loot front. I've only found a couple artifacts here and there, but I honestly think they seem neat at least. Interested to see how their gameplay grows as the game fleshes out.
The style of the game is also wonderful. I love the strange mixture of realistic mid-20th century industrial areas with the vaguely dieselpunk magitek and what appear to be cybernetic zombies and undead creatures born from experiments. There's a few love letters to your inspiration, I can see can see the Snork in a few of the designs, but they do things their own way...picking up the small gas mask for the first time and reading the description while examining the body made it clear that whatever caused this involved some seriously messed up stuff. I enjoyed being able to use the terminals to read more about the lore of the world as well. My hope is you eventually include a similar encyclopedia to how Shadow of Chernobyl did it, allowing the player to locate information on the various mutants and learn their possible origins and how the stalkers of this particular zone regard them.
I do distinctly feel that both the armor and weapon drop systems need a bit of a tweak though. It is incredibly difficult to find any armor with any level of bullet protection, whereas environmental armors are very common. Combat helmets, at the very least, feel reasonably easy to find. Weapons, meanwhile, are overly tuned to their base variants. I very rarely encounter higher quality variants in even the higher tier shops, and usually need to luck out with enemies or loot. This makes it a pain and a half to get any weapon with a taclight on it, let alone scopes or reflex sight. Just a slight bit more commonality to mid-tier weapons to allow for DMRs and sighted rifles would be appreciated, because you can at least supplement the lack of light with a suitable helmet.
The factions are interesting in their build up of lore, but at the moment it feels like there is very little difference in terms of tactics and equipment between the military, the revolutionaries, and the right-wing militia members. While they have vaguely different outfits, in terms of colors and styles, they lack the equipment diversity that STALKER's factions have. Seeming to use the same rifles, pistols, shotguns, and so on with the Army just having a slightly higher quality of weapons compared to the two rebel groups. Giving each one their own preferences would help both increase loot potential and require the player to adjust tactics for each group. Likewise, I barely see any Revolutionaries at all, even near their territories. I expected the Flood Plains to be a constant battleground between the three groups, but I only ever found mutants and militia members. Revolutionary patrols only seem to occasionally crop up in the Depot. I assume that'll be changed quickly, but it's something I noticed very quickly given the other factions spawn very, very frequently
Also, lockpicks are ridiculously rare. Practically no shops sell them, I had to find someone willing to trade gauze for them to even stock up. Speaking of trades, I've seen NPCs offer trades for what I assume are irreplaceable items, like keys. I assume this is just a randomization bug that doesn't consider whether or not the item is important, but I thought I should note it.
I've also had a couple quests bug out on me. The wrench in the warehouse, unless it's located in the cistern below, is seemingly missing. Likewise, the Missing Contact quest vanished from my quest log after digging up the package and I couldn't turn it in. A few of the other quests, like the train documents and the computer board, I have been unable to locate the objectives of due to the lack of hints on where to go. Finally, the keypads in some of the RG East lab don't seem to accept the codes you can find that go to them. This might, again, be the demo's alpha nature causing that though.
Do not mistake my critique for not liking anything though. I've not put this demo down since you released it. It's everything I love about these sorts of games, with the added bonus of a very unique world and some really interesting ideas on both combat and gameplay compared to the source. I really cannot wait to see how this slowly builds up, I bet it'll easily compare to the official STALKER sequel by the end! Keep up the great work!