Review of the game Viva Pinata created by Rare
Rating: 
About Viva Pinata
Viva Pinata is a sandbox simulation game. The game that was reviewed was developed for the Xbox360 although a version exists for the PC. The game can be played in single player mode or in cooperation mode. Players can cooperate on a single garden by plugging in an extra xbox controller. They can also cooperate using Xbox Live.
At the beginning of the game, the player is greeted by Leafos – an island resident. Leafos appeals to you for help. This landscape, once teeming with wildlife, has become a desolate wasteland. She wants you to help her restore it to its former glory.
Above: Leafos
With the help of Leafos and other game characters, your task is to turn this desolate landscape into a vibrant garden that will attract and provide homes and mating grounds for pinatas. You do this by planting, digging ponds, growing trees, hiring garden helpers, decorating the lansdcape and protecting the garden from bad pinatas, weeds, fights between pinatas and ruffians.
Pinatas are animal-like creatures that have names that are derived by mixing animal names with lolly names. For example, the mouse-like creature is called “mousemallow”. Pinatas exist to eat lollies, attend parties, entertain others and breed.
Above: A mousemallow pinata
Viva Pinata is an open-ended game. There is no specific purpose identified for the player and a garden can be played for as long as the player likes. It is up to the player to establish their own goals. However, the game does provide ways to measure success. These measures include:
- skill-based titles awarded to players
- a value given to your garden. Everything in your garden is assigend a value. Rarer pinatas are more valuable than others. A player can increase their garden’s value by attracting more pinatas (the rarer the pinata the better), breeding new pinatas and decorating the garden.
The main criticism that I have of this game is the design of its box. Whilst the box is indicative of the game, it promotes an image that the game is for young children only. Whilst young children may enjoy elements of this game (and indeed my 6 month old parrot loved staring at the vibrant images from the game), I think older children through to adults will get the most out of this game. I spoke to a 12-year-old boy about the game and he said that at first, he did not want to play the game because it looked like a “baby’s game” but once he found out what it was all about, he really enjoyed it.
Interestingly, the sandbox nature of this game makes it appealing to both males and females.
Above: Youtube video showing how to build a garden in Viva Pinata
Designed for affect
This game is immersive and can affect players emotionally. Affect has been employed much better in this game than in Endless Ocean (as reviewed previoulsy). The rest of this entry explores how the game designers exploited affect.
immersion
Like Endless Ocean, Viva Pinata also has an introductory tutorial. Viva Pinata does this much better than Endless Ocean. The tutorial is not as difficult to complete and ties in much better with the game’s narrative.
Ernest Adams (in Drennan 2009) states that there are three main types of immersion: tactical immersion, strategic immersion and narrative immersion. This game provides a high levels of strategic immersion and narrative immersion and a small amount of tactical immersion.
strategic immersion
Strategic immersion is associated with mental challenge. This game achieves a high level of strategic immersion because, although the game gives the player a macro goal of creating a vibrant garden, it does not tell the player the best way to achieve it. Player buy-in is created by allowing the player to develop goals that they care about themselves. The game does provide a framework of measures but the player can choose whether these measures are meaningful to them.
narrative immersion
Viva Pinata achieves high levels of narrative immersion. In the beginning, the story-line does not appear to be overly complicated but as the game progresses, the story begins to unfold. The non-player-characters are engaging and implore you to help them. The relationships between pinatas and the landscape are complex and take time to fully understand. The combination of these factors helps the player feel invested in the story.
tactical immersion
Whilst there are some moments of the game where the player is immersed in a tactical way, strategic and narrative are the predominant ways the game achieves immersion. Probably the most tactically immersive part of the game is the mating mini-game (strictly G-rated!). Once the player sets up the appropriate conditions for two pinatas to “romance” each other, they are ready to mate. In order for this to occur, the player must complete a short mini-game where one of the pinatas is in a maze and the player must help it find its mate. These mini-games get more difficult as the game progresses. If the player successfully completes the mini-game, an egg is produced and the pair of pinatas will soon have some offspring.
flow
Players achieve a state of flow after they feel confident with how the game works and once they have identified the goals that they wish to work to achieve. One of the advantages of sandbox games such as Viva Pinata is that each player can choose a goal that is appropriate for their level of skill and understanding. Perhaps this title of an adult player’s blog entry “I don’t care it’s 4am – I just bred a horstachio” demonstrates the state of flow that this game offers its players. Also in the comments of the blog, a female game player says: “I never thought I’d say this about a game, but i am addicted!! I have reached level 33 and am still going. Desperately trying to get a doenut in my garden! …Any idea how to get a sandwich in the garden? I need them to get my swanana to stay!”
tools used to evoke emotion
The game uses the narrative and characters, music and sound and gameplay well to evoke emotion.
narrative and characters
The game’s narrative evokes emotional responses right from the beginning. I remember on one occasion, I had set up a games lab and I had several non-gamer adults attempting to play Viva Pinata. It was the first time they had played an Xbox game and they could not figure out how to use the xbox controller. They were getting increasingly distressed because Leafos, the non-play-character who had been addressing them, would not stop crying and they could not figure out how to help her.
All of the non-player-characters are used to evoke emotion. All of the characters are vibrant and bright in this fantasy world. Most of the pinatas are extremely cute and the species have adorable and memorable names such as Cluckles and Fudgehog. A 12-year old girl told me that her favourite pinata was Mousemallow and a 12-year old boy told me that his favourite pinata was Chippopotamus. These non-stereotypical, fantasy characters help players create an emotional connection to the game. Players find themselves feeling affection for the pinatas.
The narrative emerges as the game progresses. As the narrative emerges, the emotional stakes are raised. Players find out about the original creator of the garden, Leafos’ father. They also find out about the evil Professor Pester who started out as Leafos’s father’s assistant. The evil Professor controls a band of Ruffians who do his evil bidding.
Leafos’s father was lured away from his garden one day by the evil Professor and that is when this ecological paradise started to become an ecological nightmare. The narrative serves to further connect the player to the game emotionally.
Players are also introduced to Leafos’s siblings who also help you rebuild the garden. Through the emerging narrative, the player learns to care for the game’s characters and completing their goal.
Whilst the game takes place in a fantasy world, there are also ecological parallels that can be drawn to the real world.
music and sound
The music and sound effects suit the game well and help the player establish a deeper emotional connection to the game. Pinatas have their own special calls that quite often sound like animals from the real world. The mood of the music transitions from being quite pleasant and upbeat during the day to being more gloomy at night.
gameplay
The gameplay also evokes player emotions. As with many sandbox-style games, they evoke emotion by fulfilling a player’s desire for control and they provide them with outlets for ambition and making accomplishments. Accomplishments can be measured on an individual basis against the player’s own standards or they can be measured against in-game standards. These in-game standards include player rankings and the in-game value awarded to a garden.
The player can make mistakes and recover from them. Sometimes, this may cause the player to feel frustration… frustration that can be overcome. It may be overcome by experimentation, earning money so that the player can buy useful things from the store, and taking advice from in-game characters. This is perhaps epitomised by the blog title mentioned earlier: “I don’t care it’s 4am – I just bred a horstachio”.
References
Achtel 2007. I don’t care it’s 4am – I just bred a horstachio. Ciao. Accessed from
http://www.ciao.co.uk/Viva_Pinata_Xbox_360__Review_5620648 on 20/9/2009
Drennan, P. 2009. INB280/INN280 Fundamentals of Game Design – Lecture 7. QUT.
Wikipedia 2009. Immersion.Wikipedia. Accessed from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immersion_(virtual_reality) on 16/9/2009
Image Attributions
http://flickr.com/photos/mattbrett/297675539/ used under Creative Commons Licensing
http://pinataisland.info/viva/Characters used for review purposes
http://pinataisland.info/viva/Mousemallow used for review purposes