As a kid I didn't realise it was added in post, and as fair as I was concerned it was a real threat. It's only been watching the repeats I noticed how the teams never acknowledged it. Best thing about being a kid it's easier to believe what you're seeing, you let your imagination run wild.

The original animation was so fantastic that personally I have no problem with them using it just as they used to - the design outweighs any gameplay limitations. I love the blackly comic touch of the glances left and right as various bits peel away, and the flying eyeballs, accompanied with the tolling bells, could make any death seem incredibly dramatic. For me, it's definitely an instance where the need to create good television is more important than the need to create a robust and consistent gameplay mechanic.

The two later animations, while more 'hit-friendly', just didn't have the same impact.

I do like the idea that it doesn't count down but take 'hits'

Like touching the skull or spikes, as well as other things that can drain your life force such as that symbol we saw a few weeks ago or some other nasty in a room.

Be interesting to see how the life force is use in the future.

Going back to Barry's winning quest - if the producers had shown a critical lifeforce status, estimating how long the team would need to guide Barry to the water drop, they probably would have died. By adding it in post production they can just make it look like a last second reprieve.

Some might say giving the team a finite amount of time would be a fairer way to play the game but it would have led to more boring lifeforce deaths.

The life force would be at whatever stage they needed it to be, which is exactly what happens now anyway.. but without showing the teams on their screen.

"Ooh, nasty. Sorry team, but sometimes our supporting cast members just get too carried away..."

If you show a team that they're on 50% health and they subsequently take 5 minutes to complete the room, by all accounts they're dead.

Certainly you'd run the risk of them panicking and rushing the room.

I imagine...

I understand it had originally been Tim Child's intention to have a proper life force clock that would act as a sort of measurement of "health" or "hit points" but it was too complicated, probably for the above reasons. Indeed, I do believe that there is one episode where a team is hit by the spectral scorpion and appears to take a hit to life force, but again, this was all post production.

A team so fair has already died due to a ghost draining the life force.

"The principle of the first life force clock was again borrowed from Atic Atac. There was no programming involved – it was just a linear cgi animation sequence. The Travelling Matte Company built it to my brief. It looked great but the trouble is it was always too short and there were not enough frames in it to slow it down and make it longer. It also didn’t edit too well for Life refresh purposes."

"Life Force is really what we call a hurry-up, but starvation makes for a rather boring death, so if a team were really slow, we’d summon up a monster and kill them with that instead. After all: they deserved to die, and we gave them an interesting death instead."

And before anyone mentions a certain future team of Series 2 (not yet shown on the life force but easily look-upable on the site), I count that more as a forced lock-in rather than the life-force drain it claimed to be, including by someone who's put it on Wikipedia as apparently the only life force drain death of the entire series. I don't want to cause an argument so I've left it as is even though I don't agree with it.

It certainly added to the drama from the viewers point, and used as a way for the dungeon master to hurry the teams up by giving them a 'potential' threat.

I'm a bit surprised it wasn't shown to the team on a death, in particular the early ones where they got locked in a room or turning off the lamp and bascily died because it drained away.

I guess that's why by the end it was just a pie and served even less.

But realistically, it was meaningless. If you needed food, it was there and you took it.

"It cannot be displayed on the advisors' monitor but its correct status will be given to each team at the commencement of each chamber scene. During the scene any change of Life Force status will be clearly passed on as a warning by the Dungeon Master."

I believe this was added in post production so the teams didn't see it.

I was watching Barry's S7 winning quest the other day and there's a bit I remember well from the original tx where they have to get Barry under a drip of water before lifeforce runs out. I honestly thought they nearly died when I first watched this, but it's clear they only guide Barry over to the water because Treguard becomes increasingly frantic in his lifeforce warnings. They're really quite indifferent to the threat and have no idea the animation has no armor left.

Also - back to my mate Anthony from series 4 - he says one of the reasons they took so long to work out that they needed to cover up the lifeforce draining statue was that they didn't fully understand the draining effect due to the fact they couldn't see the animation. Pickle intervened and the rest is history...

Poor Pickle!

I was watching Barry's S7 winning quest the other day and there's a bit I remember well from the original tx where they have to get Barry under a drip of water before lifeforce runs out. I honestly thought they nearly died when I first watched this, but it's clear they only guide Barry over to the water because Treguard becomes increasingly frantic in his lifeforce warnings. They're really quite indifferent to the threat and have no idea the animation has no armor left.

Also - back to my mate Anthony from series 4 - he says one of the reasons they took so long to work out that they needed to cover up the lifeforce draining statue was that they didn't fully understand the draining effect due to the fact they couldn't see the animation. Pickle intervened and the rest is history...