Thank you for playing :)
Yes that is exactly the intent ! Your strategy in the game should be to gather good stats which will help you have more chance at succeeding activities, which will give you slickness, more stats or perks !
Unfortunately, we were a bit short on time so we couldn't properly balance all the cards, and because of that this feature is not super well represented :/
It's a shame you were soft locked and didn't reach the end of the game, we have implemented plenty of ways to die :D