While cloud-enabled gaming has the potential to deliver games like Crysis to smartphone screens in all their glory, owners of Palm webOS phones can do with far less for the time being. Palm is tying up with Epic Games in a bid to bolster the entertainment value of its webOS platform.

Epic has successfully ported its insanely popular Unreal Engine 3 to Palm's webOS just like it managed with the iPhone. It today demoed the game engine on a Palm Pre Plus at the ongoing Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

This means that developers will be able to leverage Epic's popular game engine in combination with Palm's new Plug-in Development Kit (PDK) to develop more powerful games for webOS phones.  Unlike on the iPhone, games running on a webOS phone can be pushed to the background as the user engages with other apps.

The Unreal Engine 3 has been at the heart of several of the biggest games of the last few years. Titles include Gears of War, Bioshock, and Borderlands. Now Epic Games is announcing the release of a free non-commercial version of the Unreal Development Kit, powered by Unreal 3.

The dev kit is available for download right this very minute at the official site. This isn’t some stripped down version of the engine either. According to Epic, “UDK contains all the most recently added features and technological enhancements, including many that have yet to be seen in an Unreal Engine game. Furthermore, Epic Games will release ongoing, upgraded builds of UDK for free.”

The UDK can be used to create mods for existing games, as well as standalone products. San Diego based Psyonix Studios used the UDK to create a proof of concept game in two months with only two individuals. The game is called Whizzle, and it’s actually pretty neat for what is essentially a tech demo. It’s always nice to see companies giving something away for free.