Just as many other indie titles, Lost Words: Beyond the Page is based on a personal story, that hits close to the heart, but also with an ace up its sleeve. Our adventures in the vibrant fantasy world of Estoria have been dreamt up by a quite well-known author: Rhianna Pratchett. The daughter of Terry Pratchett, the creator of the Discworld universe, Rhianna managed to build a rename for herself working on games such as Risen, Mirror’s Edge, or Tomb Raider. After dabbling in the world of high-budget games, through Lost Words: Beyond the Page, Rhianna tells us a story about loss, about escaping reality and facing the demons that haunt us in real life.
It all starts with young Izzy, an ordinary girl with an extraordinary imagination, who dreams to grow up to become a writer. She starts her career with a journal, the most precious gift received from her grandmother. The blank pages soon turn into fertile soil sprouting a fantasy world, based on the personal ups and downs our young hero has to face in her day-to-day existence. Soon after creating Robyn, her alter ego, Izzy, will have to learn to cope with loss and deal with a cascade of emotions, both positive and negative. Her solution is to escape into the world of Estoria, where Robyn has to battle dragons, make friends and solve challenges.
MS calls it “personality” improvements in Edge, which starts with its Chromium version, giving users a better “Scroll personality.” This will deliver a more meaningful scrolling experience, which is also better in performance. Scroll to the bottom and choose. Search for categories like “beauty” or “funny” to add some more personality to your next meeting. In Microsoft Edge it’s even simpler. However, 'Microsoft Edge scrolling personality' breaks the core functionality on my kiosk. So I have proceeded to disable it on the local administrator account. Open Microsoft Edge. In the address bar type edge://flags. In the search box at the top, type Microsoft Edge scrolling personality. From the drop down next to Microsoft Edge scrolling personality select “ Disabled ” Once you change the status, on the bottom right corner you will see an option to “ Restart ” Microsoft. Scrolling is one of the most common user interactions in a browser, and it’s central to how we experience the web. Whether you’re using a touchpad, touch screen, mouse wheel, keyboard, or scroll bars, you want your scrolling experience to be fast and responsive. This also applies to the start menu and the settings app.
Each chapter of the game is comprised of two distinct, yet strongly connected parts. During the first, you control Izzy as she jumps, falls, and climbs on the words serving as platforms in her journal. Sometimes you must choose the right words, other times you have to put them in the right order to be able to find the exit hidden on the page. Turning the journal into an interactive, vibrant and rich experience is the most innovative part of Lost Words: Beyond the Page. This is not just about navigating a maze built up by words put on a page, but an engaging way to connect to Izzy and her emotions. This part of the game is also accompanied by beautiful and imaginative visuals that make you feel present in the life of our young hero.
The second part of each level teleports you to Estoria, putting you in the role of Izzy’s alter ego, Robyn, who has to go through a series of trials to save her village. In both parts, the game is built on a 2D side-scrolling approach, with some ultra-light puzzling elements thrown into the mix. Robyn’s hunt for the dragon is based on some choices you make during the diary phase and uses words for magic purposes. During these adventures, you will come across some words that have the power to lift or destroy the obstacles in your way, repair the surrounding structures, or illuminate the darkness.
Nothing is very complicated in the game and there is no real challenge. Of course, there are some collectibles hidden here in there, and there are some choices that influence some minor aspects of the story, but the game focuses more on the atmosphere, rather than complex gameplay. The initiative journey of Izzy and Robyn are on center stage, every other element of the game playing a support role. From the game mechanics to the story and the production value we can say without a doubt that Lost Words: Beyond the Page is intended for young adults. There is no violence, no fights, no high-end realistic graphics, only exploration both outside in the game world, and inside in the heart of Izzy presented through innocent visuals.
The game is absolutely linear and the different choices you have to make will not influence the outcome of the story. But this time it truly is not about the destination, but about the journey. It is about how you deal with loss and the plethora of emotions it brings with itself. It is about growing as a person and escaping into fantasy worlds to better understand your world. The scenario, the way the story is told, the connection between the diary pages and the characters you will meet in Estoria, the carousel of emotions Izzy is going through, the simple yet meaningful gameplay make Lost Words: Beyond the Page into a flawed game, yet a magical experience.
As already mentioned the diary pages are the best part of the game, especially visually. Unfortunately, there is a big discrepancy between the creative world told and drawn on the pages, and the flat and much more conventional fantasy world of Robyn. Somehow the illustrations of Izzy’s world are much more creative and fantastic than the imaginary world of Estoria. The soul and personality of the game visually lie with Izzy, Estoria being graphics-wise too mundane and tame. The music of the game contributes to the overall atmosphere, while the voice acting does a fair job bringing to life both our protagonists.
The Good
- A truly emotional story
- Beautiful, creative diary pages
- Novel story telling mechanism
The Bad
- Visually flat world
- No real challenge with childish puzzles
- Not enough word magic
Conclusion
Lost Words: Beyond the Page is a great story with minimalistic gameplay. It feels that through the entire game the developers focused mainly on the diary, Estoria being more of an afterthought. Still, overall, the magic is there and the game is worth a playthrough especially by young adults.There are some original and innovative ideas in the game, but in the end, is a very casual experience. Those who love a good story will love Lost Words: Beyond the Page. But those who are looking for deep gameplay, have nothing to see here.
Microsoft Edge Scrolling Personality Analysis
Back in 2019 when Microsoft announced that it would rebuild Microsoft Edge browser based on the Chromium engine, the company also promised it would retain the look and feel of the original version of the browser that was bundled with Windows 10 since 2015.
And while most of Edge Legacy has already moved to the Chromium-based successor, the transition is still under way, with some features still under development to work exactly as they did in the previous version of the browser.
One of them is the scrolling, which as many Windows 10 know already, was absolutely amazing in the legacy version of Microsoft Edge. Everything was super smooth and fluid, and Microsoft wants the same experience to come to the Chromium browser as well.
Of course, this means that other Chromium browsers could benefit from the improved scrolling as well, including Google Chrome, but that’s a completely different story,
In the meantime, as Microsoft works on bringing the old scrolling to the new browser, certain things could be broken down, and this is the case of the latest version of Edge Dev that introduces such a bug.
Microsoft Edge Scrolling Personality Type
Ore specifically, scrolling on trackpads or touchscreens in the latest Edge Dev doesn’t work exactly as expected, and Microsoft describes it as a wobbling effect. This only happens on some sites, it says, and while a fix is in the works, you can very well disable the experimental scrolling to bring things back to normal.
“Some users are seeing “wobbling” behavior when scrolling using trackpad gestures or touchscreens, where scrolling in one dimension also causes the page to subtly scroll back and forth in the other. Note that this only affects certain websites and seems to be worse on certain devices. This is most likely related to our ongoing work to bring scrolling back to parity with Edge Legacy’s behavior, so if this behavior is undesirable, you can temporarily turn it off,” Microsoft says.
Disabling the new scrolling system means you’ll just have to stick with the standard Chromium scrolling, but given the new one experiences issues, this is most likely the better way to go. Of course, this is just a temporary workaround until Microsoft manages to get the scrolling feature right, so you can revert the changes once this happens.
What Is Edge Scrolling
Disabling the Edge Legacy scrolling behavior in the Chromium successor is possible. All you need to do is turn to a dedicated flag that lets you do the whole thing. So the first thing you need to do is type the following code in the address bar to launch the advanced flags screen:
edge://flags
Microsoft Edge Scrolling Personality Type
Next, in the search box at the top of the screen, type the following flag name:
Microsoft Edge scrolling personality
edge://flags/#edge-experimental-scrolling
Next, you need to use the drop-down menu for this flag to select the disabled value. A reboot of the browser will be required to save your changes, but when the browser relaunches, everything should be back to normal and the scrolling should work just as expected.Microsoft hasn’t provided any ETA as to when it could fix the scrolling in Edge. The next stable release is due in mid-May, while new Dev builds land every week as per the standard release schedule. It remains to be seen when this bug would be corrected, but in the meantime, the aforementioned workaround comes in handy to continue using Edge Dev without the scrolling problem.