Laughter, colour, love, Haribo, balloons, fluffy toys and cake. Lots and lots of cake. Do you like any of these things? Then you’ll like Viva Piñata. Do not question the fact. Just accept it. That’s the way it is. We said stop questioning! God, alright then. If you really want to know, then underneath the saccharine sugary coating and coy cuteness, Rare has managed to hit a nerve. It’s the same thing that causes grown adults to watch children’s TV, and keeps Holly Willoughby employed. It’s just that special something that manages to sucker in kids and adults with its charm.

With vibrant character design, heartmelting animation and some of the cutest sounds you’ll hear purring from your HDTV, you’ll be under Viva Piñata’s spell as soon as the loading screens whirr into life. The aim is simple enough. Left in charge of an uninhabitable patch of grass by Leafos, you’re given gentle guidance as you start transforming it into a garden to attract piñata. “Hit the hard soil with your spade!” says Leafos. So you hit the hard soil with your spade. “Plant grass seeds on the soft soil!” says Leafos. So you plant grass seeds on the soft soil. Then, as thoughts begin to creep into your head that it’s all a bit too easy, you find yourself with more characters from the village, mating piñata, in-fighting, lack of space, money management, evil piñata and trying to keep everyone happy. Leafos? She buggered off ages ago, probably tittering at you from behind the nearest tree. So you rely on the likes of Willy Builder, possibly the greatest named character in videogames history. Slowly, you get sucked into the world of the piñatas and lose all sense of time as you concentrate on getting that damn Doenut to join your garden. It sounds trite but you won’t be saying that when it storms into your garden, eats all your hard-earned piñata, scoffs at you and then leaves because you were paying careful attention.

If you dissect the cold mechanics of Viva Piñata and lay them bare for all to see, then it’s a fairly rudimentary strategy game. It doesn’t offer anything spectacular and is a typical example of the genre in that you have to build your way up to bigger and better things – the more piñata you attract and plants you grow, the more experience you gain that allows you to unlock more items. This in turn lets you attract new piñata and grow more expensive plants, which in turn lets you attract… well, you get the idea. You have to manage the food chain within your garden to ensure that all the piñata are well fed and happy, and this is where the real skill lies – bringing in food at the bottom, so the middle of the food chain is happy, so the top of the food chain can feast happily. It’s not easy at all and those who shout, “it’s a kid’s game!” while waving their arms around like the macho adults they are will crumble under the challenge.

Yet it’s the ability to name your piñata that’s the masterstroke here, helping you feel attached to the characters and actually caring for them. When they come under attack from fellow piñata, you want to storm in to save the day and chase away their attackers. For the much-publicised romance dances (which are disappointing) and their erratic behaviour (which can be influenced but never controlled), it’s something as simple as a name that really brings them to life and makes you care.

Like all strategy games, Viva Piñata suffers from the occasional problem of thumb-twiddling, where your factory line production is running so smoothly that there’s nothing for you to do but stare dead-eyed at the screen scratching your nether regions, awaiting the first new problem to tend to. Even so, whenever the pace sags, it’s quickly stretched taut again by another manic everything-has-gone-tits-up moment as you manically save more piñata and cobble together more money for more plants and more seeds for more food and… relax. Deep breath… much better.

Like Theme Park, Animal Crossing and The Sims before it, Viva Piñata deserves its name in lights as a strategy game that combines fun, personality and heart to form a sugary, tasty whole. It’s proof that Rare hasn’t misplaced the key to its hits cupboard like everyone had thought. It’s strange to think that it’s not an FPS or a platform but a strategy game out of leftfield that signposts the start of Rare’s long road towards paying off Microsoft’s huge investment. However, if treats like these are what we can expect in the future, then we will happily tag along for the ride.

Ryan King