MyTown 2 finally goes social: Visit friends' cities and purchase their businesses

Back at the beginning of November, we learned that Booyah's MyTown 2 - the city-building iOS game that allows you to check-in to local businesses and then place those businesses in your city - would finally receive social features. It may have taken the rest of the month to release those social features, but they've finally arrived via a new in-game update.

Once you update to this newer, beefier and most importantly social version of the game, you'll have a completely new button to press within the game's menu: Friends. This gives you two options for browsing different towns: either those towns that are owned by current friends, or those towns created by people in your local geographical area. As the game always relies on your current location, you'll be able to view the towns closest to you first, and view them in real time.

Once there, you can tap on any building with a handshake symbol to see what it is, its level and other stats, and also its price to build in your own town. This is called "Franchising," and it opens up a world of possibilities to your own town (literally). Now, instead of being forced to travel to the real world locations you'd like to purchase (or at least travel to within a few miles of them), you can simply browse other users' towns and franchise them directly. The more people that play in your city, the more likely it is that you'll find the specific business you want, but you don't have to stick to local businesses either.

You'll have one common friend - Booyahtopia - that offers buildings like the Ritz Hotel in London, Saks Fifth Avenue in New York City, or even an Apple Store in San Francisco. The catch with these sorts of businesses (that is, things that aren't in your same geographical area) is that they cost premium currency, rather than coins, to purchase.

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Still, if you'd rather purchase these businesses in your town outright (without visiting friends), or want to purchase something that no one in your network or area has, you can now access the new "Business Search" feature in the game's store. This allows you to browse a few popular destinations like Caesars Palace in Las Vegas or Fenway Park in Boston (as examples), but you can also type in any city you'd like and then search for a specific business that you'd like to purchase. These too cost Bucks to purchase, but it truly allows you to customize your town in a way never before possible in the game, and in my opinion, adds a lot more enjoyment. This is especially true if you like to travel, but don't want to be bothered to pull out your phone every five minutes to play the game (just purchase those museums or attractions after the fact).

If you've already jumped on the MyTown 2 bandwagon, make sure to download this new social update and start playing the game with friends.

Have you tried the new social version of MyTown 2 on iOS? Have you purchased any of these far-away businesses for your town, or will you stick to only purchasing things that are local to you? Sound off in the comments.