From browser tab to desktop app
When I picked Next.js for Buildom, the plan was a rock-solid web app around the canvas. That part still holds. But somewhere along the way I noticed I kept testing the game the same way every day: open a browser tab, run the dev server, click through the same menus. That is not how anyone else will ever play it.
So this week I went down a different path: Electron.
I know what you might think. Electron, the memory-hungry punchline of every developer joke. But here is the thing: Buildom is already a Chromium-rendered canvas app. Wrapping it in Electron adds zero new rendering complexity. What I get in return is a real desktop app, with a real window, its own icon, and saves that do not vanish when someone closes the wrong tab.
One codebase, one build
The setup turned out simpler than I expected. The game project now has a dedicated standalone build script that bundles the Next.js output and packages it with electron-builder into an actual app. On my Mac the first result is sitting there as BUILDOM.app, version 0.1.0. Double click, game starts, no dev server, no localhost.
The web version stays. Nothing about the Electron work takes anything away from the browser build. It is the same game with two doors.
The scary part: releasing it
And then I did the thing that is genuinely harder than the build itself. I put the first version up on GitHub Releases, for anyone to download. But first let me be very clear about what that is not:
It is not a finished game. It is not even close to good. There are rough edges everywhere, missing content, balancing that does not exist yet, and bugs I already know about and more I do not.
Download Buildom on GitHub Releases
But I kept asking myself what actually moves this project forward at this stage. Another week of polishing in silence? Or real people clicking around in a version that is honest about being early? Honestly, what is better than real user feedback from real players? Even harsh feedback tells me more than my own assumptions ever will.
So this release is a promise in the other direction: I would rather show something unfinished than build a polished secret nobody asked for.
What is next
The release page is now the pulse check. Every download, every issue, every comment tells me what matters next. If you grab the build, you are not just testing a game. You are steering what I build tomorrow.