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

(2) Lua – Wikipedia

(3) LUA Programming Manual 5.0

(4) LUA Reference Manual 5.3.5

(5) Big Dan’s LUA Blog

(6) eLUA Project

(7) ESP8266-12 and NodeMCU LUA

(8) ESP8266-12 NodeMCU LUA Blinky Program 1/3

(9) ESP8266-12 NodeMCU LUA Blinky Program 2/3

(10) ESP8266-12 NodeMCU LUA Blinky Program 3/3

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Appendices

Appendix A – LÖVE Wiki and Hello World

LÖVE is a framework for making 2D games in the Lua programming language. LÖVE is totally free, and can be used in anything from friendly open-source hobby projects, to evil, closed-source commercial ones.

Hello World

This is the full source for ‘Hello world’ in LÖVE. Running this code will cause an 800 by 600 window to appear, and display white text on a black background.

function love.draw()
    love.graphics.print('Hello World!', 400, 300)
end

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Appendix B – LÖVE 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 C – 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