Thank you for your feedback :). We knew this would be an issue and tried our best to give some hints, but only managed to do it very hastily.
An interesting conundrum that we faced was that we considered adding thought bubbles or similar to more cleanly show what items are needed where - but because there's already so much going on already we felt that it would easily lead to complete sensory overload so we decided against it.
We also actually wanted the game to start with less characters on screen and then gradually bring them in - to make it initially less chaotic and easier to remember what item goes where. But unfortunately there wasn't enough time - you know how it is :D.
Thanks for trying!
/co-developer