Setting for Skid Cities serves cyberpunk, or rather the year 2092 on planet Earth. 20 years have passed since the civil war in Europe. America is divided into 3 Trade Powers, and the world's sea levels have risen so much that some cities are built entirely on water. Powerless androids live next to people, and living without cybernetic augmentations is almost impossible. Under these conditions, a new city-state begins to rise in a distant wasteland. It is its development that comes under the player’s control.

The main feature of Skid Cities is the freedom to choose the history of the city. The basis of the gameplay is classic for a city-planning simulator: by spending resources, you need to erect new buildings and monitor the levels of happiness, income and other indicators. However, here, if the residents become critically impoverished, the androids rebel against the people, or corporations gain too much power, the passage will not end. Even if happiness falls into the negative, the game will continue. This opens up unusual scenarios for the development of the environment.

The moral system of the inhabitants, for example, allows you to create both a utopia, where everyone is happy with everything, and a dystopia, where only the government is happy. It is allowed to completely divide the territory into regions with their own system and politics. Moreover, new areas can be built not only on the ground, but also in the sky or underground, up to hundreds of levels of underground or celestial streets. However, location will inevitably affect their attractiveness to settlers and other statistics.