Pinatas are immortal papier mache animals that live on Pinata Island. When one bursts in your garden for some reason, it is sent to just beyond the boundaries to roam free. Don't worry, they'll be back. Your "purpose" is to lure them to your garden. If you get them to stay and live in your garden then you can send them off to parties around the world, after which they'll return to your garden.
Basics
There are a variety of Pinatas on Pinata Island for you to discover, tame, and buy. Each Pinata has it's own personality and abilities. Each one has it's likes, dislikes, feared predators and prey. Some can be frustrating and some can be helpful. Every pinata can change there colors once, which is called a variation. In fact, some can evolve (original isn't it?) from one pinata to another.
Once you hit a certain level, pinatas may decide to "appear" and walk around just outside your garden. Once they appear, you can look in the journal's encylopedia for information on how to get them to visit. When they visit, they will cross the boundary into your garden but they will leave shortly unless you convert them to residents, which is also in the journal. Once they become a resident, they are yours until you sell them, they get eaten, or you beat them to death with a rusty shovel. If this happens, you can replace them by visiting Gretchen Fetchem or luring them back.
Romancing
Romancing is how you make more pinatas. Once you have two of the same species of pinata living in your garden, you can't lure any more. There are only two ways to get more pinata once this happens, one of which is romancing. Long story short, when two pinatas love each other very much... and eat the right food/pinatas, have a nice yard for the kids to grow up in, and a house of the right type... then you can TRY to get them to romance.
Once the requirements have been fulfilled, little hearts should pop up over their heads. Once this happens, direct one to the other and they will dance a little. Once they finish, you have to play a mini game similiar to Operation. Move one pinata through the course without crashing into the sides of the course to get to the other, collecting coins as you go if you wish, after which the two pinatas will move off to the house and dance some more. After a minute, they'll come out and a few minutes later, their egg will be dropped off. Soon the egg will hatch with a new resident of the same species.
It's important to note that after two members of a species successfully romance, you can fulfill all of their requirements to romance again with a romance candy from Costalot's with the exception of the house. This should even fulfill land requirements like "x pinometers of water."
There are really only two exceptions to the rules. Flutterscotches of every color will always produce White Flutterscotch offspring. The other is that every species only romances with others of it's own species... except for the Swanana and Rashberry who can romance with each other (using Joy Candy from Ivor Bargains) and in the "Mystery House" to produce a Pigxie. They can still romance with their own species for more of that species and if you have two Pigxie, they can romance to get more Pigxie but to get the first, this is the only way.
For the Master Romancer awards, you do NOT need to romance anything. You can get the Master Romancer award for a species without the Romance Award. The way the game tracks for the Master Romancer award is by how many of the given species you have in your garden at any given time. If you ever hit seven of any species, you will get the Master Romancer Award for that species. That means that if you are lazy (like me) you can have Gretchen hunt enough down for the award or you can be effecient and use her and romancing to get it faster.
Variants
With the exception of the Flutterscotch, every species of pinata can change into one of three colors. Once they change, they cannot change back nor can they change into a new color. After you get your Master Romancer award, you should remember to keep three to change into variations if you want to get the awards for those.
To change into a new variant, the pinata usually has to eat one or two different things after which it will immediately change colors. It can get confusing though because it's not always obvious what they have to eat to change. Sometimes a pinata will have to eat a Sunflower to change but in other cases a pinata might have to eat just the flower head or the ungrown flower seeds. If it doesn't work the first time, try the different parts.
The Flutterscotch is a special exception. Every Flutterscotch starts off white but they can change to one of eight other colors. The number of colors isn't the only thing that is unique about the transformation. Every color of the Flutterscotch is considered it's own species of pinata. Oddly enough, though, changing to the new colors don't count as an evolution even though they change into new species.
Evolution
Yes, I know what you're thinking. Pokemon rip off. What else were they going to call it though? Anyway, an evolution is a completely new species that you can obtain in a few different ways. Sometimes it involves eating something and others it involves special egg hatching. Each evolution also has 3 variants of its own. There are only eight evolutions so I'm just going to list them here.
- Candary - Feed a Sparrowmint a buttercup
- Zumbug - Feed a Horstachio both a blackberry and a daisy
- Juicygoose - Feed a gooseberry to a Quackberry
- Lackatoad - Feed a nightshade berry to a lickatoad, followed by a shovel tap
- Reddhot - Light and drench (watercan) a tafgly by having it fly over a torch
- Salamango - Have a Newtgat eat a chili
The last two are the Twingersnap and Fourheads. For a Twingersnap you need to romance two syrupents and then watch their egg. Eventually the egg will start taking big hops on the ground and after the third big hop you need to smash it with your shovel to reveal a Twingersnap. To get a Fourheads, you need to follow the same process except using two Twingersnaps and a Twingersnap egg.
