Ok, I tried my potential solution and it failed. It currently looks like this:
Every second 1 is added to the timeclock global number, which is reset to 0 on layer restart caused by pressing the retry button. But the events that occur every x seconds still occur based on the actual time since the original start of the game, not the restart time.
How can I get the time based events to work from a time after reset, not from original start?