Worm love and mood music...
While standing in the store, musing over which game I should buy next, I picked this game up and told my partner that I'd heard it was really fun but I was way put off by the kid-like packaging. A father standing next to us said he'd heard the same thing from a friend of his, that the game was really fun, and his friend had gone into "like a detailed description of how and why this game is for grownups." We all decided to pick up a copy. The clerk who checked us out asked us if we'd played because he'd heard it was super fun. And so it goes.
Viva Pinata starts you out in a tutorial-like garden that plays you through the basic controls. Gameeplay is absurdly easy to master and moves very quickly. The colors are bright, the sound-track is perky and you think, what the heck. Play on. But then about 30 minutes later when you've got worms breeding like crazy in their little worm house to their 70s style funky music and you're trying to figure out if you can make more birds to lure in the mousy looking things in order to get one of those frogs which will eat those thistles and them become part of your food chain so you can keep those snake-looking things... well, you realize you're in for the night with your little pinata friends.
I found myself frustrated a few times by my inability to get like-creatures together. But many, many problems can be solved with a tap of the shovel or the sale of surplus beasties. And there are some real laugh-out-loud moments when unexpected things happen. The game is super-cutesy. I thought that might be a problem for my super-masculine partner, but he tapped into his inner child and got a lot of amusement out of the cute names and graphics.
I do think the mini-game gets boring really quickly and the "1-4 players" thing on the packaging is misleading. This is really only a 1-player game. It is a little cumbersome to buy and sell items and the splash screens are somewhat irritating. Still, a surprisingly engaging game with plenty to do and an oddly addictive quality.