edubart/nelua-lang ? reverse-engineered prompt

I want you to build a small but real programming language project called Nelua, a language that feels like Lua but compiles to fast native code through C. It should have a simple command line tool that can take a Nelua file and compile or run it, plus a few working example programs so I can see how the language is used.

Make the language feel minimal and clean, but still support the important stuff from the README, like optional static typing, records, arrays, pointers, manual memory use when needed, and compile time metaprogramming in Lua. If you can, include a featured example like a tiny Snake game or something similar that shows it working with a library. Keep the codebase organized so the compiler, standard library bits, examples, tests, and docs are easy to find.

If you need to check current docs or reference behavior online while building, go ahead. I mostly want a working, polished first pass that feels like a serious systems language inspired by Lua.