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Viva Pinata is a rare breed of game (no pun intended). At first glance, you’d probably write it off as a kiddie game, and pay it no mind. Usually, you’d probably be right to make such an assessment, but what looks like a colorful kid’s game is in fact one of the most unique gaming experiences available on the Xbox 360.

Viva Pinata is part Harvest Moon, part Animal Crossing, part Pokemon. For those of you that don’t know already, exists in a world where there is an island, dubbed Pinata Island (of course) where Pinatas are living beings, farmed for eventual use in a party. It’s quite a left-field concept, but leave it to Rare to pull it off. Though Rare’s name has meant very little to gamers ever since signing with Microsoft a few years back, Viva Pinata could be the first stone paved on the road to redemption. While you don’t actually take the form of any character, you do manage all the elements of your garden, from its landscape to its inhabitants. The game starts off a brief tutorial from Leafos, one of the many characters you will encounter during your time with Viva Pinata. You have just received the deed for a plot of land (your garden), and as you enter it for the first time, you’ll notice that it’s pretty much the definition of a desolate wasteland. The soil is dry and cracked and the property is littered with broken pieces of old buildings. Leafos gives you a busted up old shovel and tells you to clean house. Once you’ve quickly removed all the rubbish and turned all the dry soil into fresh soil, the game begins.

Once you clear away some of the dry soil, you’ll get a visit from your first Pinata: a Whirlm. The Whirlm is a small, worm-like Pinata with big, glossy eyes and an undeniable cuteness that will make you either love it or hate it as soon as you see it. As it turns out, the Whirlm has shown up because you have turned over fresh soil. As you do more things in the garden (outfit it with grass, add a pond, etc.) you’ll receive visits from all manner of Pinata creature, each one as adorable and brightly colored as the last. Each Pinata in the game has a set of requirements you must fulfill for it to come visit your garden, as well as a set of requirements for it to become a permanent resident of your garden. These requirements could be anything from having another type of Pinata in your garden to eating another Pinata or having certain items present. Most of the time you’ll never know what the requirements are, so it’s actually pretty exciting to learn that a certain action you did caused a new Pinata to stop by. Of course you want the Pinatas to do more than just visit; you want them to stay. Getting new Pinatas to live in your garden is one of the primary ways to gain experience and level up your gardening skill, which opens up new abilities, items, and shops along the way that will help aid you in your quest to become a great gardener.

Your experience in the game is represented by blue petals surrounding your clock in the upper right hand corner of the screen. While not every level gains you something new, every few levels you will find yourself earning things like improved shovels (each adding a brand new ability such as digging ponds, cutting down trees and more), a deed to expand your garden, or sometimes new shops will open up that allow you to buy items or services that will help you along the way.

The first shop you get access to is Willy Builder, who is the local carpenter. You use his services every time you want to build a home for one of your Pinata species. There’s also a general store where you can buy anything from fruits to candy to seeds for planting among countless other items, a pet shop where you can buy domesticated Pinatas, a hunter that will hunt down and capture Pinata for you as long as you’ve already had one before, a scarecrow that will tinker with your items to turn them into crazy concoctions and more. The cast of characters is insane. They all look like something out of a Saturday morning cartoon, which is fine in that it works, but some of them smile so wide that it’s kinda creepy.

Each of the shops serve an important purpose in the game, and keeping the number of stores limited helps keep the game streamlined without having to spend too much time window shopping. If you need something, you can simply select the store you want via a menu, buy your item and go back to your garden. There’s another character that visits your garden quite often: Seedos, who walks around with a backpack and sporting a crazy tiki mask. He has an obsession with seeds, and if you talk to him, he’s usually willing to give some up to you.

Of course it isn’t just simply get Pinata to stay in your garden and that’s it. Once you have Pinatas in your garden, it becomes your job to keep them happy (or they leave) and alive. You’re also responsible for having them mate, which usually requires them to eat an item or plant, or in some extreme cases, other Pinata. Once you’ve completed their ‘Romance’ requirements and you select their partner, a mini game initiates where you must navigate one Pinata to the other in a maze lined with explosive little Jack ‘o’ Lantern lookin’ heads. If you get hit by the explosives too many times, you lose the mini game and have to try again later. If you in the mini game they will go into their house (they must have a house to mate) and do a ‘Romance Dance’, where you’re treated to an often hilarious mini video of your Pinata doing some sort of dance with one another. These dances are usually pretty funny, ranging from disco to Riverdancing and beyond. Once they finish romancing, an egg is delivered, and will eventually hatch into a newborn Pinata of the same breed.

Not all Pinatas are cuddly and adorable creatures, though. Some evil Pinata (called Sours) will eventually show up to cause problems for you by spewing sour candy that will make your other Pinatas sick, or by fighting with your Pinatas. You can choose to beat these Sour Pinatas with your shovel to get them off your property, or you can try to tame them and make them into yet another resident of your garden.

Sour Pinatas aren’t the only threat to your garden, either. There’s a group of villains known as Ruffians who will periodically come around to destroy property or even kill your Pinatas. You eventually come across ways to deal with them, but they can be a pest and really stick a thorn into your plans from time to time. Then there’s Dastardos, an evil Shaman that will come to claim (see: kill) Pinatas in your garden that are sick and left unattended.

The great part about Viva Pinata is that there is no clean cut goal. Much like The Sims or Animal Crossing, Viva Pinata dumps you into a world, teaches you the basics, and let’s you take it from there. You can customize your Pinatas with names and labels, turn your garden into an elaborate canvas, beat your Pinatas silly with your shovel, or even do nothing and simply see what happens. There’s something of a storyline peppered throughout the game, but it seems like an afterthought, and it really doesn’t serve a purpose to the overall game. There’s over 60 Pinata species to be found in the game, with more coming via Xbox Live, giving you plenty to seek during your time with the game.

Viva Pinata’s visual style is very much typically Rare. All the Pinatas are so cutesy it hurts, and the supporting cast is so wildly designed that you have to wonder what these guys put in their coffee when they get up in the morning. The entire game features bright, bold colors, from the Pinatas themselves to their houses and even the landscape. Each Pinata is loosely based of a real animal, with a name combining the animals name and some sort of food. Even with dozens of items and Pinatas on the screen at once, the game runs at a smooth frame rate, with the exception of when the game auto-saves (which is often), where it stutters for a few seconds. It’s not really a huge deal, but considering how often the game auto-saves, it’s enough to bother you after a while.

The audio in the game is equally well done, with a cheerful score as well as coos and purrs for each different species. The sound effects also lend themselves to the overall cheerful demeanor of the rest of the game. Nothing here really stands out, but it all gets the job done and fits the rest of the game perfectly.

Viva Pinata is more than it appears. When I first opened the case, I was expecting… well, I’m not sure what I was expecting. What I wasn’t expecting was to sit in my living room playing Viva Pinata nearly non-stop for 14 hours. Its beauty is in its simplicity, and its addicting qualities are in no short supply. Given the chance, Viva Pinata could hook you as easily as so many other high profile titles available on Xbox 360. If you’re willing to try something new, and aren’t afraid of something that looks like its ‘for kids’, then do yourself a favor and pick up Viva Pinata.