A piñata swings overhead. Tap where it will be in half a second — your stick takes that long to swing.
A colorful piñata swings horizontally near the top of the screen. Your stick rests at the bottom. Tap anywhere on screen to send the stick toward that horizontal position — but the stick takes about four-tenths of a second to arrive.
By the time the stick lands, the piñata has moved. To connect, tap where the piñata will be when the stick gets there, not where it is now.
A hit knocks one life off the piñata. Three hits break it open: you score a point and a fresh piñata appears, swinging faster with a tighter hit window.
You get five swings per piñata. If you can't break it in five, the piñata escapes and you lose one of your three lives. Breaking the piñata doesn't refund unused swings — the next one also starts with five.
Goal: break as many piñatas as you can before you lose all three lives.
Tap where the piñata is going, not where it is. The swing takes 0.4 seconds. In that time the piñata moves — a long way at the fast end of its arc near the center, almost not at all near the edges where it slows to turn around. Aim ahead in the swing's direction by an amount you learn to estimate from its current speed.
Strike near the edges, not the middle. The piñata moves fastest as it crosses the center of its arc and slowest as it turns around at each end. A tap aimed at the middle has to predict fast lateral motion; a tap aimed at the turnaround has almost no lateral motion to predict. Wait for the piñata to swing near an edge, predict the turnaround point, and tap there.
Use the wasted swings on diagnosis, not desperation. Your first miss tells you something about the timing — was the piñata moving faster than your tap expected, or slower? Adjust your next tap by that gap, don't just tap where you tapped before plus a panic offset. A reasoned second swing often hits where four panic swings won't.