Veteran developer Rare has been talking-up its bizarre Xbox 360 garden game, Viva Piñata, in an interview hitting these pages later today.
During our chat, lead designer Gregg Mayles and fellow design bod Justin Cook defended Rare's cutesy game saying it's not just one for the kids. "I like to think we've made a game that anybody can play," said Cook. "We wanted children to play it so obviously some of the design decisions we made reflect that... A lot of the press you see about games over the last 12 months has been about how nasty and evil games are, so this is a kind of reaction to that."
He continued: "...we've also had a really positive response from women. When we demoed the game at E3, we probably got the highest ratio of women-to-men to come and watch it. It's just something fresh and new and something they can relate to. Well... I don't exactly know that's the case!"
In the interview, the Piñata-duo also touched on their rejected creature designs, breeding mini-games and that other game-TV tie-in, Pokémon.