It's sort of a puzzley adventure type game (in sort of a point-and-click adventure way, but directly controlling your character). Similar to other Telltale games. You can die/fail, but it just takes you back to the last autosave or event beginning, and you just have to try again. So no real way to actually lose the game completely...but that's true with a lot of games these days. There are specific decisions you make that do effect the story/character paths, though.
So, yes, part interacting with the environment and figuring out (largely item-based) puzzles, part interacting with characters, part watching the story unfold and making decisions that effect it. There are action sequences, too, that largely unfold in the form of QTEs.