I just found this mod today through moddb. I was immediately interested not only due to wanting to check out pretty much all horror games/mods, but because of how good it looked running on Doom 2 of all things.
As I played though I realized what it was REALLY based on. It was made as a mod/wad for Doom 2, sure, but it was more or less based on S.T.A.L.K.E.R, namely the MISERY mod for CoP, and as such suffered from a lot of the same issues said mod has, and is also comparable to Cry of Fear for similar issues.
The biggest issue I think this game has is it's incredibly complicated inventory and stat management system, with a complete lack of any explanation for how things work, as well as fairly strange item placements.
Making items stack better as well as keys disappear upon use will help immensely, but this still leaves the issue of figuring out what weapons have any actual value. Scissors break, and can't be repaired, but they dont seem to have any more range or damage, or even less stamina use, than the monkey wrench that can't break. The metal pipe can't be repaired and has low durability, but the pickaxe has high durability and can be repaired, and is primarily only better than the monkey wrench for the power attack, so why would I ever use the pipe? Then of course theres the hammer, sledge hammer, and axe, all of which I haven't been unable to craft yet due to lack of wooden poles thus far. Any of those COULD be better than the pickaxe, but I wouldn't know, and the only way to find out is to wait till I get a stick.
So, as I established, i'd like to hold on to all these weapon parts, but that means I have less room for healing items and none weapon crafting parts like empty bottles and syringes. I'm told what I can combine, but not what they make until I have all the items, and even then I don't know what the item i'm making is until I make it. I can combine rags, duct tape and scrap metal to make what looks like a metal shiv, but I see no reason it could outperform the pickaxe/monkey wrench, the scrap takes up room in my inventory, and if I did make it, it would likely double its inventory size due to all weapons using 6 squares. (this is true so far for me at least)
This also means less room for healing items, and here's where I think things get too complicated.
There are 2 main ways to heal hp, medkits and stims. medkits just heal hp. Simple. Stims though, those cause you to get hungry, and also cause a small amount of bleed, so you gotta take care of those when you use one. Bandages heal bleed with no downsides, but blood coagulation tablets make you hungry. Most food fills you up, but raw meat damages your health, on top of radiation as most food does, so you gotta then deal with radiation. Thing is, of the 2 ways to reliably heal radiation, one damages your hp (alchohol/vodka) and the other makes you hungry. (anti rad pills)
This causes a feedback loop of healing, getting hungry, eating, gaining radiation, then lowering it and having to balance radiation level and hunger constantly, while not losing too much hp from certain food items.
It's, frankly, just kind of a mess, and one that's directly from MISERY mod. I think the MISERY mod is mostly overrated because of this, and all the other tedium forcefully injected into it for the sake of "realism" and being "hardcore". Even so, MISERY can get a middling pass because it also adds a lot of other content, can be mostly tweaked to be less of a pain, and even excluding that, the game world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R is more fitting due to how it plays. Total Chaos is a horror game, and resource conservation should be an important factor, but micromanagement should not. I don't consider Starcraft or EVE online to be horror games.
I think, just like MISERY, this has a massive amount of promise, buried just a bit too much in faux difficulty cause by incredibly aggressive resource conservation mechanics, too many stats to handle, and not enough info on what my options are, and while i'm no dev, I think a lot of these things are totally fixable, and would be relatively achievable.
So here's the actual suggestions I would make.
2 mostly easy ones first.
1. Give us a full compendium of what we can craft, updating based on what parts we have picked up. Meaning, once I pick up a rag, I can see what I can make with it, and what else I would need.
2. On top of that, give us a way to tell what weapons do before we make them. Otherwise all that will happen is I (and presumably others) will carry what I have room for/deem most likely to be a good weapon, up until I can make it, then i'll save, make it, see if its better, and savescum until I find out what all is useful and what isn't.
3. More frequent auto saves, please? I'm used to spamming quicksave in stalker/fallout etc but not in mostly linear horror games, especially ones as punishing as this one.
Then, some suggestions that are likely a lot more difficult to implement.
1. Multiple "difficulties". Specifically, the current mode is fine as is for those that like it, but the option to remove radiation as a stat, and make combat a little more forgiving, and maybe even make hunger go down slower, or not at all and simply go down when using items that made it go down, would mean a hell of a lot more people could enjoy the mod.
2. I think stamina needs some tweaking overall. I don't know feasible it is, but I think a melee stamina and a dash stamina bar, separate from each other, would appreciated. I would also say the stamina stat needs work. I don't even know what its intended to do, but it doesn't seem to do much of anything, and depletes incredibly fast anyway. If you, for example, made the stamina bars separate, freeing up combat significantly, you could also tie both to the stamina stat, making items that grant said stat much more useful.
3. Make melee weapons a lot more varied stat wise. I think Condemned would be a good place to look for an example of this. I imagine this would take a lot of work, but having more reasons to use different weapons would make the game a hell of a lot more enjoyable in spite of how unforgiving it is. If the scissors used less stamina, had a lot faster attack speed, but had VERY limited range, compared to a pickaxe, which would have more range, damage and stamina usage, on top of swinging slower, and all the other weapons fill in niches, you would make the weapon selection have a lot more depth to it.