I’ll outline a couple of approaches but can’t promise either of them will work.

The .rpm I looked at contains a single executable¹, love-0.7.2, which does link to liblua, but not a version available in buster:

> ldd love-0.7.2
    linux-vdso.so.1 (0x7edbb000)
    /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libarmmem-${PLATFORM}.so => /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libarmmem-v7l.so (0x76e33000)
    libc.so.6 => /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libc.so.6 (0x76ce5000)
    libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x76cb8000)
    libopenal.so.1 => not found
    libfreetype.so.6 => /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libfreetype.so.6 (0x76c15000)
    libGL.so.1 => not found
    libIL.so.1 => not found
    liblua5.1.so.5 => not found
    libmodplug.so.1 => not found
    libmpg123.so.0 => not found
    libSDL-1.2.so.0 => not found
    libvorbisfile.so.3 => not found
    libphysfs.so.1 => not found
    libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libstdc++.so.6 (0x76ace000)
    libm.so.6 => /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libm.so.6 (0x76a4c000)
    /lib/ld-linux-armhf.so.3 (0x76f28000)

The “not found” stuff might be resolvable by searching apt packages, but there are some version mismatches. Installing close versions and symlinks have a long shot at working, but I suspect the openGL stuff will not be so easy.

You can try to build it from the source.

git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/love2d/love.git

There are directions on the github page; the first one failed for me:

> platform/unix/automagic

But with more patience you may be able to work out the problems…there are what look to be current wiki, forum, and IRC links on the github page.

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1. You can unpack rpms fairly easily: rpm2cpio love-0_7_2-0.7.2-3.5.armv7hl.rpm | cpio -idv, see https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/61283/yum-install-in-user-home-for-non-admins/61295#61295

Question

How to find LÖVE?

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Answer

Rpi4B buster 19sep > GUI Desktop > Preferences > Add / Remove Software > LÖVE 11.1-2

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References

(1) LÖVE 11.1 Mysterious Mysteries Documentation

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Appendices

Appendix A – Love Newbie Start Up Guide

When beginning to write games using LÖVE, the most important parts of the API are the callbacks:

(1) love.load to do one-time setup of game,

(2) love.update to manage game’s state frame-to-frame,

(3) love.draw to render game state onto screen.

More interactive games will override additional callbacks in order to handle input from the user, and other aspects of a full-featured game. LÖVE provides default placeholders for these callbacks, which you can override inside your own code by creating your own function with the same name as the callback:

-- Load some default values for our rectangle.

function love.load()
    x, y, w, h = 20, 20, 60, 20
end

-- Increase the size of the rectangle every frame.

function love.update(dt)
    w = w + 1
    h = h + 1
end

-- Draw a coloured rectangle.

function love.draw()
    love.graphics.setColor(0, 0.4, 0.4)
    love.graphics.rectangle("fill", x, y, w, h)
end

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Appendix B – LÖVE Modules

(01) love.audio – audio interface for playback/recording sound.

(02) love.data – creating and transforming data.

(03) love.event – manages events, like keypresses.

(04) love.filesystem – interface to user filesystem.

(05) love.font – to work with fonts.

(06) love.graphics – drawing shapes and images, manageing of screen geometry.

(07) love.image – interface to decode encoded image data.

(08) love.joystick – interface to joystick.

(09) love.keyboard – interface to keyboard.

(10) love.math – maths functions.

(11) love.mouse – interface to mouse.

(12) love.physics – simulate 2D rigid body physics.

(13) love.sound – decoding sound files.

(14) love.system – access to user system info.

(15) love.thread – multi-threading.

(16) love.timer – high-resolution timing functions.

(17) love.touch – interface to touch-screen touches.

(18) love.video – decoding and streaming video files.

(19) love.window – interface for the program’s window.

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End of answer