If you've ever read "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," you might be familiar with one of the jokes in Douglas Adams' "Life, The Universe, and Everything," which states that the universe has stopped producing actual objects because a wide and infinite universe is capable of producing planets where things such as mattresses or Bic pens live naturally. Viva Piñata assumes something quite similar, but you replace Bic pens with piñatas — animal-shaped party toys filled to the brim with candy treats. In the world of Viva Piñata, piñatas exist naturally and roam freely. They become filled with candy as a natural byproduct of eating their favorite food, and there are even farmers who raise them to sell. Despite that this is, in theory, an utterly horrifying concept, Rare has somehow turned it into a charming and cheerful little franchise where adorable kid-friendly graphics hide the fact that it appeals to gamers of all ages.

In Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise, you begin as a piñata farmer. Your garden is a little patch of land granted to you for the sole purpose of raising piñatas. Folks across the land simply love piñatas; they love having all sorts of piñatas filled with candy and treats for their parties, or just to have around the house. People are also rather picky about the kind of piñatas they're getting so it's up to you, as a dedicated piñata farmer, to raise the correct one to satisfy everyone's desires.

Your first goal is to earn some piñatas. There are over 100 different kinds of piñatas in Trouble in Paradise, and each and every one has its own preferences and desires. In order to convince a piñata to stay in your garden, you have to make it happy. Doing so involves a number of potentially different activities. Some piñatas will be happy if your garden has a certain kind of flower growing in it, although others are far pickier and will only remain in your garden if you can feed him a worm piñata.

Once you've attracted a piñata to your garden, your goal is to feed its favorite foods and give it a friendly name. Doing so raises its "Candiosity," which, of course, tells you how much delicious treats are stored inside that particular piñata. There are a number of different ways to alter your garden to ensure that the piñatas are happy. For one thing, you can plant a variety of seeds, which grow into lots of different flowers. By using watering cans and fertilizer, you can grow unique plants, which may make it easier to build up Candiosity or are required for rare piñatas. You also have to be careful about certain nasty ruffians who sneak into the garden and try to scare your piñatas or poison them with bad treats. Luckily, you can hit them with a shovel to scare them off. There are even "sour" piñatas who may cause destruction to your garden, but if you're careful, they can be tamed and made into friendly piñatas.

Raising a piñata isn't always as easy as luring it into your garden and stuffing it full of candy. There are a few kinds of piñata that won't show up simply because you have an inviting garden. For one, exclusive to Trouble in Paradise, you can leave your garden and travel to distant locations such as the Arctic or a desert. There are some piñatas that can only be found in these far-off locales, and they're popular and in high demand. To earn one of these piñatas, you'll have to set traps and lure them with bait, which can be difficult for some of the pickier papier-mâché creatures. Once you've captured them, you also have to make a habitat for them in your garden. A creature used to the desert isn't going to be happy in your garden unless you've created a mini-desert in which he can play around. This can be accomplished with the use of environmental packets, which allow you to "pour" other environments onto locations in your garden. A healthy environment takes up a lot of space, so keeping these piñatas happy takes a good bit of work.

The second kind of "rare" piñata is a baby piñata. Somehow, despite being made entirely of papier-mâché and candy, piñatas are capable of reproduction, although getting it to mate takes a bit of effort. Each breed has specific requirements that need to be fulfilled before it is willing to do the "mating dance," and you'll need at least two piñatas of the same species to fulfill these requirements before you can start thinking about baby piñata. These requirements can vary, but usually involve giving the piñatas an expensive home and a healthy dose of their favorite foods. Once your piñatas are in "the mood," you can choose to have them mate, and once you've got your piñatas primed for romance, you play a mini-game where you have to guide the male to the female as he picks up hearts and avoids monsters who wish to delay his progress. You're timed for this mini-game, and doing well not only earns you a baby piñata, but also a health dose of rare chocolate coins to spend in shops. Once you've completed this rather lengthy process, your piñatas will sneak off to their house and perform the mating dance, calling on Storkos to bring them a papier-mâché egg that eventually hatches into a baby. A lot more complex than they made it out to be in art class, huh?

No matter what the piñata required, though, his eventual fate is the same: packed into a crate and sent off to whoever the requesting person was. In return, you as a farmer gain money and experience points that can be used to improve your garden. Money is used to buy food and traps or simply to add new things to your garden, such as houses. Experience points cause your garden to level up as you complete requests, and a leveled-up garden has a number of new features that make it crucial to keep leveling up to ensure you have the maximum piñata-raising skills. Each level may grant you new items at the local store, cause the local seed-giving Seedos to give you new kinds of plants, cause new kinds of piñata to be available, or even increase the overall size of your garden so that you'll have more room to play with.

Trouble in Paradise is a simply wonderful game for people to play together, either over Xbox Live or in the same room. Xbox Live gamers can create a multiplayer garden, where items or piñata can be traded, or you and your friends can have your piñatas compete in races or beauty contests. You can work together on a garden, or you can let your friends visit and ensure they don't suddenly wreck the place. Far more appealing is the concept of the Couch Social, which makes this an optimal game for parents to play with their children. Couch Social mode allows you to plug in a second controller and help out the main character, not unlike the Co-Star mode in Super Mario Galaxy. The Couch Social player has access to the best tools in the game and a magic bar that fills whenever he or she does something useful, which can then be used to heal sick piñatas or fill Candiosity. This is a wonderful way to allow a younger child to play the game along with a parent, or for two friends to hang out and raise some piñatas together without the competition of races and contests.

To further make the game more accessible for the younger crowd, Trouble in Paradise also includes a Just For Fun mode, where you're given a simplified garden, access to all the piñatas and tools in the game, and infinite money. It might be a bit simple for adults, but Just For Fun mode allows kids to build up their piñata gardening skills without the potential frustration of learning the more complex features. Challenges and Achievements are turned off in this mode, but it's an ideal addition for monkeying around or for the younger crowd who isn't yet up to the challenges of the main garden.

Honestly, Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise is a fantastic game for adults and kids alike. It's simple enough for kids to pick up and play, especially with the Couch Social and Just For Fun modes, but the complexity of taming and raising piñatas is addictive enough that even an older gamer might find himself playing for five minutes, only to look up and realize that he's been farming adorable piñatas for hours. Viva Piñata fans or newcomers the franchise should find this to be an excellent addition to the franchise, with more of the great gameplay found in the original Viva Piñata, and a healthy dose of new piñatas and gardening tricks.