It is maintained through pills and cards (potions and scrolls in other rougelikes). Pills are randomized at the start of the run, cards you have to remember what each does. But also tabletop rpgs have changed since then. 2e era fantasy Vietnam isn’t what most people want to play anymore and so while random potions still exist these days you’re more likely to be able to figure what they do before being turned into a chicken
To elaborate:
One of the foundational elements of Rogue and Roguelikes (that is so polarizing it isn’t part of The Berlin Interpretation) is the idea of randomized and unknown item effects. It goes back to tabletop gaming where you would find a potion and have no idea what it does, so you would give a sample to a rat you keep in a cage or splash it on a goblin prisoner. For obvious reasons, that shit went away in favor of skill checks.
The BoI items were very much in that vein. Theoretically you would memorize them over the course of runs and learn the synergies that helped you. In practice… ain’t nobody had time for that shit.
But it is a design philosophy that wasn’t uncommon for roguelites/likes of the era.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Binding of Isaac items are explicitly in that vein, in fact, given that its version of potions (pills) are indeed randomized on every run. I haven’t checked out the new update yet but insofar as I’m aware those still are.