Randy, are you after killing my career?
Marketing was a part of this, which is illustrated by the fact that The Adventure Company have just re-designed the box cover. It certainly wasn't a cover that stood out on the shelves, originally. The European cover was even worse.
Competing with so many other titles just before Christmas really hit its potential sales hard. It's insane that so many games are released in the same short time-period. BSTSD failed to gain any momentum that might have done well for long-term sales.
One of the reasons for the complaints about crates is that some of the puzzles weren't placed in a proper context and appeared to be just bolted on. Another one is probably because there's a pretty big one just before the final confrontation and it takes something away from the tension we'd built up at that point. If we'd had more time to polish we would probably have realised that ourselves.