In an unexpected turns of events, I made a Sudoku in about an hour for a speed setting competition on the CtC server and even managed to get second place. Of course, I couldn’t help but make it a hybrid with my favourite genre.
The prompt for the competition was simply to make a Sudoku with given digits in exactly the places you see in this puzzle and no others. Beyond that we were allowed to use any variant or hybrid rules we wanted. I had actually made a 6x6 Sudoku with these hybrid rules a few days ago for a collaborative project and had planned to try this on a 9x9 grid anyway, so this was a great excuse.
I think I got really lucky with how everything worked out at the end and my only regret is that the Sudoku part can be solved before finishing the final bits of the Choco Banana. But such are the sacrifices made when speed setting.
Note that SudokuPad does not answer-check the shading, only the numbers. The Penpa link expects you to complete both.
Rules: Place a digit from 1 to 9 into each empty cell so that each row, column, and bold region contains each digit exactly once.
Variant: Choco Banana hybrid — Additionally, shade some cells such that all groups of shaded cells are rectangular and all groups of unshaded cells are not rectangular. Circled numbers indicate the size of the shaded or unshaded group they are in.