Lua is a high-level, lightweight scripting language developed in Brazil in the early 1990s. It is designed to be embedded in applications, making it a popular choice for game development, where it allows developers to script game logic and behaviors without modifying the core codebase. Lua is characterized by its simple and easy-to-learn syntax, efficient execution, and powerful data description constructs, such as tables, which serve as its primary data structure. It supports multiple programming paradigms, including procedural, object-oriented, and functional programming. Lua’s performance is often compared favorably to other scripting languages, and it is used in a variety of applications beyond gaming, such as web development, network programming, and configuration management. With its lightweight footprint and extensibility, Lua is particularly suited for applications where resources are limited, such as embedded systems and mobile devices.