I missed out on v1 in the fall I assume, so I can't comment on how much it's improved. I quite enjoyed thinking about shortest paths in relation to the river and mirror (free) cells.
In my humble opinion, the game would be twice as fun if the check steps was fixed to be on, and there was a fixed goal to try to reach. Still, fun though!
My biggest gripe was the current position cell color was hard to see on my monitor. I also couldn't figure out if I was making the "right" moves when hiding the map, as the current position cell did not update (too much for me to remember personally).
I wish we had a 4th category, technical merit, as the map generator here is quite good! You definitely put a lot of thought and work into it, and it shows!
Looking forward to v3 (or another game) in the future!