Its written in perl + SDL, how would you expect it to handle giving startup
feedback?

I'd have to ask the same question... but also point out that this report would
have much more chances of giving results if it was done upstream directly.

If we are speaking of startup notification, if perl-SDL :
- Does handle it, then I can proxy the request/fix to upstream
- Does NOT handle it, then I'll have to close as WONTFIX or CANTFIX

...unless someone feels like hacking on perl-SDL :-)

I've send an email to Guillaume Cottenceau (the author), asking if he knew if
this was possible at all.

He says that the very first thing that the game does is display a "Loading..."
screen, so there's not much more he can do. If anyone wants to look at the perl
GTK bindings to try and make a "real" startup notification, then great, but in
the meantime I'll close the bug as WONTFIX, sorry.