Nicee
Just to add to the issue, I ran the game on my laptop, which is also an Arch system with similar packages installed.
Both of the machines are Ryzen 1st gen machines, but the GPU on the laptop is an AMD Integrated GPU.
While it runs the game poorly, it runs and it starts up nicely, so this seems to be related to Nvidia.
It seems very similar to the freezing issues that was happening to Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition until an update to Proton Experimental was made.
I wouldn't rule out this being another Nvidia screwup.
proton experimentalx2 2023-12proton 8.0-4x1 2023-12
System Information
I confirm:
Proton Log file:
steam-1683150.zip
Symptoms
Game doesn't start, once you click "Launch" in Steam you are presented with a black screen and it doesn't progress from there.
Checking out the log, it seems to behave the same way with either Proton Experimental (Bleeding Edge) or the normal Proton Experimental as well as Proton 8.0-4.
Reproduction