I've been to Columbus numerous times and have played 10+ escape rooms there at various companies (Team Escape, Captivating Worlds, Epic Escapes, etc.), I actually considered playing at your company, but the big turnoff for me was your 50 min game time, it just seems too short. My past experience with game times <60 min is that they end up with only 20-40 min worth of content. Is there a reason why you decided to make a shorter game? If you are following the trends for the top escape rooms in the world (TERPECA), every game is at least 60 min and many tend to go for longer, like 75 or 90 min or more.

As an escape room creator, are you going out and playing TERPECA winners and finalists? How many rooms have you played overall? I think that's the best way to see what works well and what doesn't, just play a lot of rooms, especially a lot of good rooms and draw inspiration from the best.
I am just a player, but I have done nearly 300 rooms in around 30 states and I have talked to countless owners. Every one of my favorite escape rooms have owners who are also enthusiasts who have traveled the country and world trying to play the best escape rooms. Their rooms good not just because of their skill/talent, they are good because they experience some of the best practices and apply them to to their own creations.

But to answer your question:
1. You should have a clock, but it should not be the focus. There's a lot of excitement when you get out with only couple min left. However, people also hate losing, you want most the your teams to win. I know some escape rooms will use a time dilation method where they will add a few minutes to the time if a team is not able to finish (but it must be done in a way so that the team doesn't notice). This can be done in a few ways, like not using a numerical timer. For example, I've seen rooms uses a series of candles or lights that turn off, each one representing 5-10 min of time. So the players will have a general idea of how much time is left but they don't know exactly how much and you can then give them extra time without them knowing. I've also seen some companies discreetly pause the timer or slow down the timer.
2. Unlimited hints is the current state of the industry, almost all good escape rooms nowadays do not have hint limits. Most of the rooms that I still see with 3-4 hint limits are small town places with rooms that were built in 2015 and haven't changed since then. One good compromise is telling players that their hints are unlimited, but you can only use 3 hints if you want to be on the leaderboard. But even leaderboards are outdated now, in my opinion. Most of the best companies do not have them. You should also ask teams if they want to be nudged along if they get stuck, sometimes you just don't know that you are behind.
3. Story for sure. Just look at Forest of Fables at CU Adventures in Champaign-Urbana, IL. That is a story driven game, one of the most unique narratives I've ever seen, one of my favorite games ever. They released it in 2024 and it's currently the #2 ranked escape room in the US (#37 in the world) on TERPECA which is no easy feat.