Up until a set point the game kindly hides the realities of the food chain in order to help keep things simple. It’s pretty essential, as after the first few minutes of breeding WORMS you’ll soon find yourself hopelessly innundated with a huge amount of strange and wonderful creatures wandering in and out of your garden willy-nilly. It’s the hardest hurdle to get over in Viva Pinata; at times it feels like you’ve actually very little control over what’s going on in your garden, and considering it’s essentially a simulation game, this is a reality that many find hard to swallow. The peak of this chaos hits when the game finally decides to take the stabilizers off, activating the prey/predator relationships of all the creatures in your garden at once. A wave of paper mutilation suddeny engulfed my garden: Previously peaceful relationships became bitter feuds, as many of my favourite Pinatas were mercilessly eaten whilst I bumbled around watching the genocide unfold, slightly peturbed by the knowledge that the only way I could prevent these deaths would be to take matters into my own hands with the blunt edge of a shovel. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Viva Pinata.

Underneath all the crazy characters and neon colours, essentially it’s a game about animals, and stepping into this kingdom brings with it some harsh realities. Creatures will only visit your garden if the eco-system suits them, and will eventually stay permanantly if the area appears to have food for them to eat and a landscape to which they’re suited. After time, watching the pinatas gobble each other up without remorse becomes something you simply have to accept: As in real life, it’s the unavoidable reality of the food chain. At the same time, these little fellers are criminally cute, which certainly doesn’t make the sugar coated genocide any easier to swallow.

It’s the requirement of you to accept the life and death cycle within Viva Pinata which makes it such a defining god game: You have the abiity to create and destroy, but despite this have very little control over the innate behaviour of the creatures inhabiting your world. Breed a lot of cute little birdies, and some bigger birds of prey will turn up having spotted the feathery snacks. Again, if enough of these bigger predators turn up, it won’t be long before even massive flying beasts turn up to check out the buffet your garden now offers. Once you accept the uncontrollable chaos of this natural world, you soon find yourself in an almost harmonious state of observation, tweaking and pruning your garden as the inhabitants of the garden shift through revolutions of their own accord; your role in the garden is to slowly guide these changes to suit your preferences, attracting creatures to find a home in your luscious landscapes in order for them to act as bait for larger, more majestic creatures.