Space Monkeys

Space Monkeys are Ascension’s answer to the dog round, and the only special round in the classics that attacks your property instead of you. They arrive in crashing lunar landers under an orange sky — zombified survivors of the cosmodrome’s primate program — and make straight for the perk machines, hammering them until the perk you paid 2,500 points for simply falls off your HUD.

The round only exists once someone owns a perk; before the first bottle is bought, the monkeys stay home. They are not helpless against players either — a heavy close-range swing, a long-range slam that dazes anyone who does not jump it, and the disquieting habit of picking up your grenades and throwing them back.

Fighting them

Camp beside the machine you can least afford to lose and drop the monkeys before they connect. The stakes reward perfection: the last monkey always pays a Max Ammo, and if the round ends with no machine so much as scratched, a Random Perk Bottle drops beside it. The Thundergun is unreliable here — monkeys backflip through the first blast — and the Gersch Device merely teleports them, so honest gunfire is the tool.