JSON-RPC testcoins for development

Hi Guys,

I'm currently working on a couple of projects (a faucet and a dice site), wich will use json-rpc calls to a daemon to import private keys, generate new deposit addresses and/or let my users withdraw coins to their wallets.
In the past, i always used bitcoin testnet coins to test all features while developing, but the thing is: even the testnet's blockchain is pretty large. It takes a long while to load/parse and reindexing is a pain in the *ss. Also, i don't like the testnet's stability.

I was thinking: does anybody have suggestions for an altcoin that is easily compilable (or has a precompiled binary for linux) with a very small blockchain (preferably only a couple thousand blocks), with a seperated coind and coin-cli (just like bitcoin), wich is virtually worthless (a coin i can still mine a couple blocks off with my cpu, or one that has some faucets, or one where the developer is giving away a couple hundred coins for development purposes?).