I tried to run AfterShift again today, after fiddling with it and proton for the considerable part of yesterday and in the end giving up for the day, and it just works now (every version of the game, except for 0.6.1.x since I don't have them). That's for not knowing what's up with working, breaking and working again all of the sudden, I'm here with you for it.
Thank you for offering to temporarily open downloads for old versions, but, as stated earlier, everything works for me just fine again now. I wouldn't mind getting to have 0.6.1.x versions at hand though. 👀
Regarding windows in a VM, I'd like to not. I'm a lazy ass, it's too much hassle for me to set it up and then spin it up every time I want to play a game and then turn it off just so it doesn't gobble all of my ram and hangs the whole system. :-P