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Viva Piñata for Windows

Gotta Collect 'em All

To entice a more achievement-oriented player, the game tracks numerous statistics about your efforts - the main one is your gardener rank, which rises based on the number of different piñatas you have managed to add to your garden. Initially, you just add things to the garden to attract piñatas, but over time you have to consider all the interactions between different species, and the landscape your garden offers - some of the buggers may end up fighting, some might eat each other, and some have specific needs for their habitat. It all has to be just right, so they stick around and ultimately do the... ahem, "Romance Dance".

To pair up piñatas, you have to find the mate in a simple mini-game.

When you successfully mate the first pair of a new species, you are rewarded with a pretty Romance Dance video.

Viva Piñata is mostly a "sandbox" game - you are encouraged to experiment and fool around with the available tools, and the whole "game" side is mostly just fluff that got tacked on so more goal-focused players would have something to aim for. This also means that Viva Piñata is not for everyone - it's very clear this is primarily a game for kids. It has some surprisingly adult themes: for example, piñatas form food chains - the very first couple of species teach you that in order to get a bird-like species (Sparrowmint) to mate, you have to feed each piñata a Whirlm - an earthworm-type piñata - so, in essence you have to raise some species just so another species can eat them. Then there is the whole business of mating and producing offspring and the concept of different piñatas getting along with each other in different ways; some species have to be separated from each other, or unsuitable plants you need to grow for another species. Some can also evolve to other species if you fulfill the required hidden condition - usually by feeding something odd to it.

A new species of piñata appears - showing interest in the garden.

As your level rises, your shovel gets upgraded, and you can do new things with it.

I think it may all be just a tad over the top for your average preschooler - but I'm not exactly an expert on today's kids, so who knows. But at least Viva Piñata doesn't end up being too simple, and I guess the game is designed to be played with a parent on hand to explain the concepts for the younger players.

Page 1: IntroductionPage 2: GameplayPage 3: Gameplay (cont.), User InterfacePage 4: Graphics and PerformancePage 5: Final Thoughts and Scoring

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