Brown Sky

Brown Sky arrived in Pump It Up XX with the 2.08 update, slotted into the Remix channel. The track itself is a remix that fuses two of Doin's own songs, his famous tune about a squirrel running on a wheel and Iolite Sky, into a single 200 BPM piece. What drew the most attention, however, was the charting credit. For the first time these charts were not handled by WINDFORCE, the stepmaker who had usually taken care of Doin's songs, but by DulKi. It marked DulKi's official debut after a stretch of building a strong reputation in the community for posting high-quality custom stepedits.

The Single difficulties are S19, S21 and S25. The S25 is one of the most stamina-draining charts in the whole S24 to S25 range. It blends the smudging (munggaegi) of Iolite with the bursts of the squirrel song, which makes bad-judgment buildup easy to accumulate. Its late long-note assault section originally worked as an extreme clear-prevention zone. PHOENIX brought meaningful tuning: the level rose from 24 to 25, and the forced ending pattern, effectively impossible to clear with twists alone and only beatable through workarounds, was redesigned into a 1+2 burst that clean twisting can handle. A roughly 160-combo long-note potion was also added just before the finisher, which actually lowered the perceived difficulty. It now reads as a solid entry-level 25.

On the Double side there are D21, D24 and D26. The D24 has no especially complex passages, but from the midpoint onward it grants no rest and no potion, and that alone earns it a high-tier 24 placing; trimming your movement to conserve energy is wise before the closing stretch, which asks for drags, smudging and an air-raid run. The D26 drew harsh feedback in its pre-release reveal, with players accusing it of copy-pasting the Iolite and squirrel charts without the maker's own character, of awkward long-note grips, and of bursts with no breathers. In practice, though, the bursts let you spare leg strength and are easier to smudge through; its perceived difficulty sits at high-tier 26. In PHOENIX the tick rate of the long-note potion before the finale was raised.