The inventory mechanic was indeed broken, but not in the way think it was. The way that it was intended to work was that once you gave an item to a character, it’d be stuck with that character for the rest of the puzzle. That way, choosing which item to give to which character would be part of the puzzle. I thought I squashed that bug, but by the time we realized that I had only half-squashed it (I removed the dragging animation, thinking I had removed the entire bug), it was too late and we had to submit the game.
You’re right. As-is, the inventory system is pretty unnecessary. Had we had more time to fix the bug, it would’ve actually had a place in the game.