LUA Compiling questions

hello,

i read about the script-language LUA, which i never heard about before.
i guess it sounds ok to create some minigames, like the minesweeper clone or other little games.
i used to code in pascal for DOS and a little bit for directX in delphi years ago and can't get used to C, which i tried for coding for the GP32.

can anyone recommend LUA (for small projects)?

and another important question: is it possible to compile a LUA-project to a .PBP file? or is it always neccessary to have the LUA runtime?

thx