Fillomino with Sudoku Variants

There's been a couple of new important releases this year in terms of metroidbrania sudoku. I've gotten through the smaller one and most of the way through the larger one. While I was solving them, it occurred to me that most of the variant rules included in these massive puzzles have already been established as sudoku variants. I find it particularly interesting to consider that clues often resemble their conventional symbols despite the logical solve path assuming the solver doesn't know what they mean until they're explained. Maybe this is intentional thematically in the same sense that someone might discover a useful trick or a secret passageway on their own in a game. But for me, I see black dot and my brain wants to go on autopilot, but I feel like I owe it to the creator to restrain myself until I see the popup that explains them. I think it would be fascinating to see a metroidbrania sudoku in which every single variant clue type is unheard of to the veterans. Maybe that should be my next big project?

During a discussion that mentioned how sudoku is typically almost always accompanied by variants in online communities, I realized that the clue types that regularly appear in variant sudoku are rarely applied to other number placement genres. I suppose there aren't that many number placement puzzles compared to other input types, but there's definitely some untapped potential for crossovers.

I chose to use Fillomino as the base because it's relatively well-known and somewhat loose but has inherent logic that can narrow down possibilities in certain circumstances. In case you're unfamiliar with the genre, here's a quick classic puzzle.

https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?fillomino/3/2/1g4i

Thanks to Witscord for helping test-solve most of these. As is tradition, the puzzles here have been ordered by schedule, and so difficulty fluctuates wildly across variants.

Thermo