Viva Piñata First Look

While Rare may be recently known as the developer of the slick first-person shooter Perfect Dark Zero and the colorful and challenging platformer Kameo, the veteran UK studio has been around, in one form or another, for over two decades. Over that time, the studio's oeuvre has touched on just about every genre, including more mainstream genres such as kids' titles. With its latest release, Rare changes gears and revisits its kid-friendly material with Viva Piñata, an original title that draws on a variety of familiar game elements to offer a unique experience with some multimedia ties. We recently had the chance to check out an early version of the game to see what this unique title is all about.

Our demo began with a quick fly-thru of the island, which will serve as the game's setting. When the camera stopped its tour, we were greeted by Dedos, a young woman wearing a festive mask who was there to fill newcomers to the island in on the basics of Viva Piñata's gameplay. Your goal is to tend to a small garden made up of a small plot of land, which is outlined by a white line. The first order of business was to do some landscaping on the unsightly area, which has been overrun with clutter. To do so, our demoer busted out one of the upgradeable tools you'll use in the game--a shovel--and proceeded to mash up all the offending litter. Once the area had been flattened out, the next item to be used was a packet of quick-growing grass, which helped to beautify the bland patch of dirt left by flattening all the debris. After giving the grass a mild watering--courtesy of another of the tools you'll use in the game, a watering can--the simple patch of land started to look inviting enough to catch the attention of one of the island's resident wild piñatas. Yes, wild piñatas.

We'll go ahead and switch gears right now to fill you in on the basic goal of the game, that being to have a garden that's snazzy enough to attract and house the 62 "breeds" of piñatas that live on the island. The wild piñatas will be simple monocolor critters that will gain color once they decide to take up residence on your plot of land. Once that happens, you'll want to keep an eye on them and make sure they're content. If you're lucky, you'll be able to attract pairs of the same breed, who'll take a shine to each other, as denoted by the universal sign of floating hearts above their heads, and head off into a habitat and...dance. Once their jig, which plays out in an in-game cinematic, is over, a stork will pop by and drop an egg that will contain the fruit of their boogying, a baby piñata.

Attracting piñatas will obviously be key toward building your garden's population. To do this, you'll have to maintain a certain level of appearance for your garden and meet certain conditions, as everything appears to be linked in the game. In our demo, the first piñata attracted to the garden was a worm. Once he took up residence in the garden, he was joined by another worm. The presence of two worms then attracted a bird piñata, who obviously had some vested interest in coming to hang out closer to potential meals.

Once you start to get into the piñata-attracting swing of things, you'll find that there's going to be a good measure of multitasking involved. While you can choose to take on all of the assorted duties required to maintain your garden and piñatas in a happy state, anyone looking to have a mellower experience can hire helpers to tend to the different chores you'll have to deal with while playing, so you can focus on one aspect. If you choose to focus on the happiness of your piñatas, you'll be able to click on each of your residents and examine their personal preferences to ensure that you're doing the right things to keep them happy.

At this point, you're probably thinking the game is pretty bland and are hoping for some spice. Well there is some conflict to be found, as the island will contain surly piñatas, called "sours," who will try to encroach on your little oasis and mess with your residents, either by scaring them off or turning them sour, denoted by a dark-red color scheme and generally bad behavior. You can hire some help to ward them off or handle the job yourself. While you may be thinking your shovel would be the ideal way to deal with the malcontents--piñatas being made for a good bashing and all--you'll have to be careful, as breaking a sour open in your garden leaves behind bits of corrupting material that could seriously mess up your population. These bad-seed piñatas are led by the antisocial Dastardos, who, with a name like that, is obviously looking to stir up trouble.

As far as the multimedia hooks go, you'll find two key areas--Xbox Live and television. The Xbox Live hook is a pretty cool use of an upcoming feature of Live--object transfer--which will let you send piñatas from your game to a friend or upload and download them from the Marketplace. A custom tag on all of the piñatas in the game, which will contain user generated art, will flag their lineage, letting the world see whose game each piñata came from. In addition, there are plans for Live content and events in the game, such as the ability to exchange piñatas, online-themed contests, and even races. The television hook is a bit more conventional, as the game is one part of the Viva Piñata "experience." The game's island setting is also the location where an upcoming CG cartoon will be set. The twist will be that the action in the cartoon will take place on a different part of the island from where the game does. However, the cartoon will reveal information that will come in handy when playing the game.

The visuals in the game, which were still very much a work in progress, are likely to be initially underwhelming to anyone expecting a sense-shattering display of the Xbox 360's considerable graphics power. Part of this is due to the game's art style, which is simple and doesn't lend itself to gratuitous uses of lighting, normal maps, or real time. However, there are some nice touches if you look closely. The piñatas themselves, which come in all shapes and sizes, have a distinct look that features flourishes such as the independently moving pieces of papier-mache. Besides the in-game graphics, you'll be treated to in-game cinematics that show off pivotal moments in the game, such as the mating dances between the piñatas.

The audio was hard to judge, as much of it wasn't in our version of the game. Some of the music was in, but the bulk of the voice and some of the sound effects hadn't been implemented properly. The final version of the game will contain full voice for the human characters and a range of effects for the paper-y stars of the game. One thing to note is that, while the game is based on the upcoming CG cartoon, none of the piñatas will speak.

At the end of the day, Viva Piñata is a change of pace for Rare that may surprise some who've only become acquainted with the developer by its most recent offerings. Longtime fans will merely see the game as the developer revisiting its lighter roots. Whether or not this turns out to be a good thing remains to be seen. The Xbox Live functionality is cool, but we're hoping that as more of the game is revealed, there'll be more to it. The gameplay and collection mechanics are geared toward a younger gamer. While there's some potential to hook older gamers, as the Monster Rancher and Pokèmon franchises have been able to do, we'll need to see more and try the game ourselves to see if it will have that kind of crossover appeal. Viva Piñata is currently slated to ship this fall in time with the CG cartoon from 4Kids. Look for more on the game in the coming months.