I'd say it's less the game's "second area", and more "an experiment I did to try doing more environmental storytelling within the constraints of the map style (and to verify that community level upload/download worked as expected)".
Works on Mac! If I input it incorrectly, it still does the grey screen thing, but when done correctly it will download and let me play. I triple checked on Windows, but no matter what I seem to get a grey screen.
Into the Hive felt more controlled. I still found myself getting lost and not knowing where to go. I wonder if fog of war on the maps, only revealing as I go would help.