this is the first version i have played and i am very very impressed, i already would pay money for this, i am surprised you would call it pre-alpha. it's a fantastic horror game and i absolutely love its direction, it's very cleverly designed and the scares are fantastic -- most of the time, i'm just scaring myself!
when it comes to feedback, the broadest area i think could use improvement is making gameplay more intuitive, so LESS tutorials, less reading is needed, so people can play the game more than they look stuff up and potentially get spoiled.
as a #hardcore #gamer i could absolutely imagine much more casual players being turned off by not being able to figure out how to do important things.
i could not understand how to put an item in/out of my hand for a very long time despite looking it up. which is very important because you can't ride the ATV if your inventory bar is full.
some interactions such as putting a CD into a server or a gas can into the cremator requires you to specifically drag a physics object, not use it out of your hands, which fails quietly and is not obvious at all.
some hints towards core gameplay features such as "bagging trash for huge amounts of money" and "sv.target" could definitely use some ingame clues.
the compass being reprogrammable with sv.target is HUGE, and immediately made going outside comfortable as opposed to really stressful and slow. perhaps it could be a good idea to have a command on the satellite consoles that explains functions, such as typing in "help sv.target"
it's not obvious that bagging trash is one of the very best ways to make money because that's certainly not true in real life, and i'm sure most people would think that trash is for the cremator, which seems to produce no fuel at all from trash. perhaps your initial emails could allude to this; that the "outside team" would appreciate and reward you for cleaning up trash piles for them, if you sent it back. drop an item box on day 1, perhaps?
these are important things it took me several hours of play to learn, because they just are not intuitive or explained at all... and unfortunately, a lot of people will just skip over games if they dont get completely hooked in an hour or so. and the core gameplay is stressful enough!
as much as the design of VOTV is brilliant, this is its biggest weakness, that it could use some more help in being easier to learn without having to sit down and read, which i really don't think is all that necessary. the hints and tips menu is a crutch for that for now, and in this aspect I would agree that it could be considered a pre-alpha.
other minor things I most personally found annoying:
most of my "i can sense something" or broken pause menu events were just nothing. multiple times i just could not find out what was going on at all. which is a shame! if i am brave enough to go look around, i would like to see something happen.
also, i found cleaning the windows to still be a fool's errand. the fact they get dirty again isn't so bad, but the problem is that the dirt reappears quickly, and in the WORST spots: directly in your line of sight, as huge smudges which immediately draw my attention from the outside.
for how expensive the pressure washer is, i found it to be a very bad purchase, since it barely holds enough water to clean one section of wall, and requires you to run to the shower every single time.
i also never noticed the camera outside the front door at all. never ever after weeks of playtime. had to have it pointed out to me. why not have it active by default?
a tiny bug: deer and the.... sun creatures, do not appear on IR at all.