The game is set in a mirror world (called the New World) where players, referred to as citizens, join in local and national politics where they can help formulate national economic and social policies as well as initiating wars with their neighbours and/or tread the path of a private citizen working, fighting and voting for their state.

[citation needed] eRepublik has spawned a number of similar games due to the commercial success.

Citizens of the New World can be employees, own businesses, form political parties, vote in elections, become party presidents, members of Congress or country presidents, write newspaper articles and even go to war as citizens of virtual versions of real life countries.

It is the main reference point for all the local virtual currencies (examples: USD, GBP) and it is used to buy additional features (such as companies) within the New World.

It can be obtained freely by reaching certain levels or achievements, or purchased with real life currency.

A citizen has a patch of land where they can construct various buildings, such as farms, mines, factories, storage and training grounds.

There are also moving tickets which can only be obtained as reward from the weekly challenge (meaning to fight in the battles) and are used to travel through the regions.

If the vote passes, the two countries are at war and each region is attacked either by order of the president or automatically by the game every 24 hours.

Eight to twelve battles, lasting one and a half to two hours long, must be won by either side before the region is declared conquered or secure.

The role play of the New World consists of combining the capabilities of the above modules to reach goals and become leader in one or more domains.

Game developers, noting the use of IRC channels and forums outside of the main eRepublik site, and the importance of social interaction in the game, released a new module, the Chat Module,[6] allowing users to create their own chat rooms, and interact with other citizens while remaining on the main site.

The user-maintained Discord servers, forums and IRC channels, however, remain more popular and this little feature is used by few.

[7] Players create IRC/WhatsApp/Telegram chat rooms, forums and Discord servers for each nation, and create fictional entities such as militias, political take overs, as well as discussing social events dealing with players of the game.

On 11 May 2018,[8] it was announced that a mobile app for eRepublik was under development and the closed alpha phase initiated on 16 May for both Android and iOS.