Waxworks is a first person point and click adventure game made by Horrorsoft, known also for the Elvira: Mistress of the Dark games, which are cited as spiritual prequels to this game. As such, the gameplay and graphical style (right up to the grotesque death scenes) is quite similar to the two Elvira games. However, there have been many, many improvements in this game that puts it miles ahead of the Elvira series.
For one, the addition of keyboard controls in this game make navigating the mazes much easier than in previous incarnations, where you were forced to use the mouse controls almost exclusively. In addition, the gameplay itself is much smoother and less prone to totally unavoidable deaths. In previous games, there are numerous times where just walking down an unmarked hallway would result in death, whereas for the most part there are marked traps that can be avoided. That is not to say that dying is not an issue here; you WILL die a lot in this game. So much so that you'll probably have to stop and save every few minutes so that you don't lose your progress. As far as general gameplay progression is concerned, it's much more streamlined and your objectives are, for the most part, pretty clear. You're going to run into a lot of items in this game, but when it comes time to actually use them, it's pretty clear exactly what items need to be used when, something the previous titles hadn't quite gotten right. None of the puzzles require needless amounts of trial and error, and don't suffer from "try using *insert random item here* and see if that does something" syndrome like many adventure games do.
That is not to say, however, that the game is perfect. One major nitpick is the cumbersome combat system that was implemented in this game. While an improvement over previous titles, it still leaves much to be desired. Battles are still very much hit or miss, and often times you'll find yourself having to reload your last save file because you missed one too many times. Luckily combat is only majorly emphasized during one portion of the game, and is an afterthought during the rest. The way combat usually goes during each portion of the game is that you'll find yourself getting killed a lot early on in a level, only to find yourself overpowered and killing enemies in one hit after a bit of exploring.
The worst flaw, and one that keeps the game from excelling, is that there are many ways to actually break the game in such a way that it prevents further progress throughout the game. I actually had to restart entire levels over again (after having spent a good hour or two playing through them the first time) just because something happened (unbeknown to me) that blocked me from going any further. For example, there is one level in which you are traversing a mine overrun by plant-like aliens. Among the many traps, there is a runaway mine cart that you have to stop by dropping a wooden support beam in its tracks. If you don't know that you're supposed to stop to cart and instead run out of its path, the cart will stop at the end of the track, which just so happens to be blocking off the only way out of the mine. In addition to that, if you drop the support beam in the wrong spot, it could possibly block off another hallway, with no way to get around. There are several game-breaking moments throughout the game, and it will happen without warning and often you'll find yourself wandering around not even knowing that there's no way to progress.
If it weren't for the above flaws, this game would have definitely gotten a much higher score from me. It's an immersive and interesting game marred by a cumbersome combat system and a few game-breaking errors. Pick it up if you're willing to look past its flaws, you'll find it's actually pretty good.