We got a lot of feedback about the control/UI system in our entry Wicked Wanderings (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/wicked-wanderings).

The main criticism was how tedious it is placing items in the cauldron in order to make potions. To place something in the cauldron it currently takes 3 separate actions - TAB to open the menu, double click (or single-click and press Space) to carry an item, then E to place the item in the cauldron. Then you also have to take the resulting potion with E after it's made in the cauldron. This means a minimum of 6 actions to make one potion, or 9 if it's a 3-ingredient potion - and that's not including taking things back out of the cauldron or making intermediate potions for the "more advanced" recipes: - TAB (opens menu) - Double-click item (menu closes, player carries item) - Press E (adds item to cauldron) - TAB - Double-click item - Press E - (Optionally) - TAB - Double-click item - Press E

That's quite a process. Here's a quick screencap of what that looks like:

That might not look too bad, but I'm also the one that implemented that system. For someone new to the process, it can be a hurdle they're not willing to spend the time to figure out.

One idea given to us for improving this process was to implement context sensitive menus. For instance, if you're standing next to the cauldron and select an item in the menu, it should leave the menu open and just put the item into the cauldron for you. This way the player has a more seamless menu experience, and the amount of required actions to make a potion drops to just 3 for 2-ingredient potions, and 4 for 3-ingredient potions: - TAB (open menu) - Press MIX button (adds item to cauldron) - Press MIX button - (Optionally) Press MIX button

That seems better, what does that look like?

It is better!

We had a blast making this submission, and thanks to all the valuable feedback, we hope to improve our skills and come back next Jam better than ever.

(Obviously we won't be updating our submission with this change as that would violate the rules and spirit of the Jam, this was just for me to do some more learning on a separate "post-jam" branch of the repository.)