Building Siderform: A browser strategy game with vanilla JS, Canvas2D, and PeerJS

Carlos — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 23:53:02 +0000

Hello, my team and I just released Siderform: Planetary Conquest, a free turn-based tactical strategy game that runs directly in the browser without installs or server-side game accounts.

The goal was to combine the territorial tension and resource management of tabletop board games like Catan with quick 1v1 web sessions. Every turn begins with a manual dice roll to harvest Solar, Metal, Bio, and Gas across a procedural grid. You then spend two Action Points to expand with Outposts, upgrade them into Living Pods, launch Bio-Takeovers on enemy sectors, or trigger Overclock to extract resources immediately from a controlled sector without waiting on RNG.

On the technical side, the entire client is built with vanilla JavaScript and HTML5 Canvas2D with zero external game engine bloat. For online multiplayer, we integrated PeerJS to establish direct WebRTC peer-to-peer connections via private room codes, allowing players to start 1v1 matches without matchmaking servers. Local progression and the 50 in-game achievements are stored client-side with a simple JSON export and import feature so players keep full ownership of their save state.

You can play it right now in a desktop browser on itch.io: https://regixlabs.itch.io/siderform-planetary-conquest

Any feedback on the WebRTC connection stability, Canvas rendering performance, or game balance is welcome.

DEV Community: Carlos

Building Siderform: A browser strategy game with vanilla JS, Canvas2D, and PeerJS