Hi, Thanks a lot for playing the game and providing feedback.
The puzzles reset once you re-enter the room.
Although we had designed the story progression to include info gathering, I feel like it became a little too obtuse. Since the parts of the gameplay it was going to support had to be removed due to the looming jam deadline, it ended up becoming a little redundant.
Now for the timer, it's just there to get the player feeling a little tense, and something that can go along with the theme.
Either way, thank you so much for your feedback. We'll do our best to make the progression more intuitive and the game even more polished.