What happend to RELEASE mode in visual studio 2022

To add to what Rick has said ...
Debug mode will work, but it both non-optimal (i.e. bigger and slower) than the release version, and includes lot of information to make debugging easier (i.e. references back to lines of code, considerably less optimisation so the executed code is closer to what you typed, and so forth.

Have you checked the "Debug" dropdown on the toolbar - it should contain two project types "the default debug version and the release option, or you should be able to right click the solution and select it from there.