I can teach you to learn Lua if you background is BASIC in three-steps simple algorithm
1) forget BASIC
2) if you still know BASIC goto 1
3) learn Lua by fresh mind :)
Jokes are so jokes but BASIC was my first programming language 22 years ago... and i should say, if you will write in Lua with that BASIC's paradigms and style you will lose at least a half of language power (i'd say, more than half, but well, let the O(power_loss) be 0.5)
The other side is that BASICs are usually very powered-up by graphics and audio and other stuff you may want. No bother with any 3rd party libraries and so on. If you need some environment to write games in Lua like one could write in BASIC two decades back - look at the Love 2D framework. Though, i'd recommend to just learn Lua leaving BASIC influence aside. And then try Love.
