I don't expect picking up small objects to be obvious that you need to crouch first. Its a problem of gameplay necessity. Since it uses the same button as attack, I disable it if an enemy is nearby and for minor objects, but always prompt for solid physics objects which block you, or table height objects.
The demo was always bound to be totally overwhelming since its a whole game's worth of mechanics packed into 7 levels instead of slowly rolling it over the course of a game. I'd hope to be able to have a longer tutorial and a helper monkey to navi you whenever a new mechanic is rolled out
thanks for the footage, its indeed very helpful
/e also consider as a point of pride you made it through the whole demo which is supposed to be made much easier by the ranged attack spells and debuff mechanics (spike/freeze in particular trivializes a lot of it). So you basically just did an Ironman+Despair run ^^