Chuck your chimp through a stunning jungle landscape as you collect gems, medallions and bananas. U.K.-based independent developer Yippee! Entertainment brings simple, one-touch gameplay to four lush worlds (12 levels each) with irresistible characters and endless hours of fun. Chimpact recently achieved the No. 1 top paid app spot in the U.K. Windows Store, and developing a Windows Store app with DirectX 11 and Xaudio 2 helped Yippee! Entertainment extend their platform support and bring Chimpact to Windows Phone 8 in just a month’s time.

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Start a jam session anytime, anywhere with Music Maker Jam. Simply combine the song parts and instruments to get the sound you want, adjusting tempo or adding spectacular effects in real time with the intuitive touchscreen control. Enjoy a full studio experience with this music jamming app from German developer MAGIX. Music Maker Jam was one of the first apps in the Windows Store and one of the first to pass the US$25k threshold. MAGIX is now making 80 percent revenue for the lifetime of Music Maker Jam.

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Do the math with five calculators in one (Basic, Scientific, Programmer, Currency Converter and Unit Converter) with large buttons for quick, error-free typing. Perfect for your next adventure, Calculator² helps you convert more than 150 world currencies and more than 200 units for conversion across 17 categories. Richard Walters was a physics Ph.D. student looking for a decent scientific calculator on Windows 8. He loved the experience of building the app so much that he gave up physics for a career in app development.

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Add some inspiration to your daily cooking routine with beautiful images and recipes from Cookbook. Browse more than 300,000 by category or search for a key ingredient, then add your favorite recipes to your personal recipe book for easy access at future mealtimes. French developer Slow Sense was a First Apps Contest Winner with Cookbook in 2011, and they’ve gone from a technology training company to an app development company in the space of a year.

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The power of creation is in your hands! In this addictive puzzle game available in 12 languages, mix and match different combinations of fire, earth, wind and air to create an entire civilization. Work up from a simple microorganism to create animals, tools, storms and even armies. DoodleGod has already seen 500,000 downloads to date, and JoyBits was able to reuse 100 percent of code from the Windows Phone version when building the game for Windows 8.

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Paint 4 Kids opens a world of artistic imagination with drawings and blank canvasses to fuel creativity and provide hours of fun. Fill a shape with a single tap, choose the size of your brush and then share and print your masterpiece. Ela & Pietro Lab is seeing thousands of downloads a day of Paint 4 Kids.

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Urban Airship delivers targeted push messaging services for Windows Store apps to increase app user engagement and retention. The updated service supports push messages to Live Tiles, in addition to Toast Templates and Raw notifications, offering new ways for app builders to engage their customers through their Start screen. It took Urban Airship 3.5 years to send 10 billion push messages, and in 2012 Urban Airship reached more than 40 billion push messages sent.

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