This is one of those labor of love games like Dwarf Fortress that probably will continue slowly updating until the devs die (which will be a little harder in this case since this is less of a one man show.) It has a lot of potential to do a lot of really interesting and weird stuff. It's always hard to review these because in a year the game could be different in ways that would make it much better or much worse than it is now, but I have been playing it a bunch lately so this is as good a time as any to say that the experimental branch that I am playing is pretty good.

It's not as complex as Dwarf Fortress, but still has incredible depth in gameplay that still surprises me after probably hundreds of hours. For example, after thinking for the longest time that the wallets on zombies were useless flavor items, I found out just recently that you can actually deposit their cash at ATMs and use a credit card to buy gasoline at gas stations. Playing cataclysm is having small discoveries like this every play session. Also the crafting system is so incredibly complex, except for advanced weapons and junk food you can probably craft every single item in the game yourself with enough dedication, starting with sticks and stones and ending at complex machining and chemistry. While sometimes complex tasks can get tedious, there always is a way to do things smarter and more efficiently. Once you figure out how the interactions with the game world are implemented, you can probably emulate most real world actions you could think of in any given scenario, like throwing your empty gun at an enemy's head or using a clothing rack as a makeshift melee weapon.