Southampton, Jan 2025
I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from Operation Spitfire going in – it’s rare for a room to have no reviews at all on this site, and frankly that’s usually not a good sign. Sneaky Dog focus at least as much on VR games as on their live ones, and also underwent a change of ownership a few months back when it briefly seemed they’d closed. Their location is in Woolston across the river, in the part of Southampton that’s less convenient for most visitors, which may be the reason most enthusiasts passing through go instead to other venues in the city.
Operation Spitfire is of course a WWII theme, and I played it as a family group with younger players – even though it’s a 90 minute game described on their website as extremely difficult. Our host did admit that in the five months since he took over, only one group had completed it successfully, which helped set expectations.
My first impression wasn’t amazing – expect a fairly bare space, shelves and padlocked furniture with bare floorboards and spartan decorations. It also started off as slow going, where with concerted effort we’d find something we could solve, but which wouldn’t then lead anywhere further. However, we did eventually discover that the game set improves considerably in its later stages, with significantly more impressive visuals and immersion – while remaining a relatively challenging game to solve.
At the same time, I found several of the puzzles genuinely interesting and original, and a rewarding challenge. The style reminds me of early Hungarian rooms, lower budget with mostly padlocks and physical mechanisms but also some ingenious uses of physical props and out of the box thinking.
The difficulty too is similar to those rooms, in that it’s easy to get lose time trying something that’s plausible but wrong, or simply failing to spot the small key detail that you need. Solutions were obscure in a way that was often quite close to the line between ‘tricky but reasonable’ and ‘mind-reading’ – but, with one or two exceptions, tended to stay on the right side of that line. You could decide the game needs to improve its signposting or that it’s fine as-is for players who are looking for a challenge.
It could do with a little more pro-active intervention from the game master. In our case he was almost entirely silent for the first half hour and much quicker to help near the end. I’m appreciative of him not over-cluing, but a couple more nudges when we were flailing near the start would have improved the overall experience.
In the end I liked it much more than I thought I was going to at the midway point. It’s definitely not a room for players looking for immediate wow factor, nor is it particularly suited for beginners. If you want something that’ll exercise your puzzling muscles, and consider yourself observant and persistent as well as tolerant of some rough edges, then Operation Spitfire could pleasantly surprise you. And if not, at least the failure ending is nicely done. 
