Salutations!

This guide is intended for just the basics of the game! It won't be going into any basebuilding/long term survival tactics, or anything like that. Maybe it will in the future, but for now the game is in such early stages of development I don't care about adding that as much yet.

Hopefully this will help new players get a grasp on some gameplay mechanics, as there's no tutorial.

I'll update the guide as things are added over time as well, the game is in early alpha stage.

Enjoy!

Open the game from Steam or from your desktop.

This is the most crucial step for playing Project Explore successfully.

If you've made it this far, congratulations! You're on the main menu. Select "New Game" after configuring the graphics settings to your liking.

Okay enough horse dookie. Time to actually play the game. Prepare your meat cavern, as it's about to become taut and quite puckered with stress.

You'll spawn into the game in a random location, with minimal resources. This is after you use the state of the art, massively detailed and customized character creator. It's honestly so deep you can see Adele rolling in it. Runescape '02 would be proud.

The first thing you should make note of are your stats! In the bottom right of your screen you'll see your customized character has four (4) stats. These are:

Health,
Hunger,
Hydration,
Sanity

Health, Hunger and Hydration are pretty obvious.

Now for actual helpful hints.

HEALTH

Drains very slowly over time with some exceptions (see below). Your max health is not 100, it's actually 150.

Taking damage, having 0 food/water/sanity OR being out in the elements such as sandstorms or bad weather will moderately drain your health.

Eating food, drinking some liquids, or applying first aid will increase your health.
For maximum food/health increase, the different cooked meats seem to be most helpful, like deer, wolf, or bear meat. Of course that means you have to kill an animal in order to obtain those meats, so if you're vegan you're SOL.

HUNGER

As stated before, eating meats seems to be the best way to increase the most amount of your food stat, however there are other ways to raising it.

You may find honey oat bars as loot in some places, or canned meats like tuna. These also increase food/health but not as much as meats.

Vegetables like potatos and corn are also grown naturally in the wild, and as a MAN you're also naturally talented at farming. If you come across the seeds of plants in the wild you can grow them near your home base you build/acquire for a great source of food. Sometimes animals can be scarce and difficult to find, so you shouldn't rely solely on meats/loot to feed you, but that's long term surviving, your first day you'll be fine with just finding/scaveging foodsources, farming is a later gameplay element I'd avoid while still exploring.

Don't be like North Korea, and don't starve.

HYDRATION

Your water level decreases over time just as the food level does. In order to increase your hydration, you'll need some liquids and unfortunately your own urine does not count.

Finding soda cans as loot throughout the world is a good way to get hydrated, but a better and more stable way is to find bottled water. Once you find some bottled water, place it betwixt your lips and drink it. But don't throw that bottle away! You're the last man/woman on Earth (until Multiplayer is added) so if you throw away your bottle that means that literally 100% of the world population is not recycling and that's a no go, ya dilrod.
Instead, reuse that bottle more times than a $20 hooker is used in a weekend. If you find a pond, bring your empty bottle (which by the way, full bottles stack to 8 bottles and empty bottles ALSO stack to 8 bottles in your bag) and equip it into your 1-4 action bar. Select it and hold down your RMB when on the edge of the water to fill your water bottle, keep holding it down if you have multiple bottles, the game will automatically fill all of them one by one. Use this as a portable way to always stay hydrated, and they will last you a long time.

Don't be like Africa. Keep drinking water with you at all times.

SANITY

Here's the interesting, ponderous stat. Your sanity is on the line as the last human without having other humans to talk to, and sock puppets of your family don't do the trick anymore. You'll have to stay sane if you don't want to end up jumping into your own firepit.

Losing Sanity

Your sanity decreases the most while at night. You'll begin to see messages saying things along the lines of "You feel someone watching you" or "You're uneasy" and you'll notice your sanity quickly decreasing. But fear not, you dapper young gent! There are ways to combat this!

Standing near a campfire will lower the rate at which your sanity decreases at night by %20+

If you happen upon a Warding Stick as loot, each use of it to ward off enemies costs you 5 Sanity points.

Raising Sanity
To raise your Sanity level, there are a few ways you can go about this:

Reading books (Depending on the book, slightly increases sanity, read multiple for best results.)

Killing enemies/animals (Slaying creatures beneath you, as a human, naturally increases your mental state as the dominant species. +10 to Sanity with each kill, just remember to press 'E' while standing over the body to reap the benefits!)

Sunlight! Being outside during the day slowly increases your Sanity! So go out there, hermit.

Don't go insane!

COMBAT

Clicking with your RMB is your default key for attacking enemies/harmless deer. Depending on the weapon you use, more or less damage will be dealt. I've found that for the early game, using a stone hatchet worked far better than just a rock, and is my weapon of choice until crafting a Forging Table where you're able to create metal swords.

The wooden sword is useless, don't try to use it in battle or you'll end up in a worse state than a pedophile in prison. It'll be ugly.

Try to outmaneuver your opponents in combat. Bears and Wolves like to "prep" their attacks by standing still then lunging towards you, if you circle around them you'll be able to hit and run them with ease after a few tries.

Also, learn the attack speed of your weapon/tool. It's helpful for longer battles.

Bullets are easier to craft than arrows, as they require less resources. If you come across a 9mm pistol as loot, use it instead of the bow.

If the game tells you to go indoors for a natural event, GO INDOORS. All of your stats drain quickly in inclement weather.

Backpacks are your friend, if you find one put it in your perk section and you'll receive additional inventory space. (+7)

9mm bullets require less resources to craft than arrows. If you come across a 9mm pistol as loot, forget the bow. Use the pistol, and craft more bullets.

Build a stone axe/pickaxe quickly, your resource gathering will be much, much quicker with them. On top of that, as soon as you can upgrade to metal tools, do that as well. It greatly effects gameplay.

To make the compass work, you have to craft a flag as well. Place the flag, name it, open the compass, select the flag you placed and your compass will point you to it. Use this if you establish your own main base to always come back to it.

Before you have a compass, if you already have a base or have habitated in a hut you've found and are using it as an HQ to store resources to build one, when you scavenge for resources travel directly N,S,E,W and stay heading directily in one direction looking for resources, this way you'll always be able to find your way back simply by turning around and going back exactly where you came from, you won't lose your base/belongings.

Towns have high loot drops, if you find one see what's inside!

You can break down locked doors with a weapon.

Remember! This game is in it's very early alpha state. There should (hopefully) be much, MUCH more content added to the game over time. Things might/probably change as more elements to the game get included. I'll try to update this guide as they do, or as I discover more things and hopefully it has helped some people who have just got the game get some footing!
I may have (and probably did) miss some gameplay mechanics in this guide, but it's intended for basics for a reason, and hopefully it's useful to you.

Good luck, and have fun!