The game revolves around the Heechee technology and finding ways to utilize it for the most part. Most of the worlds the player visits are pretty much dead, apart from the odd species / monster here and there. Even then, the main point is still finding Heechee ruins, collecting their artifacts and putting them to use.

That said, I haven't read the books, but I'm fairly sure that it's more of a 'free' adaption rather than a conversion. Many of the company's other games are, so this is probably no exception.

As for the Assassins... play the game!

I have this game in my hard-drive since I saw it somewhere but still haven't played, and I doubt I will as always have problems with the interactive fictions.

Looking at the images it seems to have little relation to the books. For what I remember it was all around the creations of the heechees, and the other three alien species that appeared where more for decoration than anything.

But in the images it seem they preffered to put "exotic" worlds than to keep that theme. It looks as the typical problem of the adaptations, it ends looking as if they didn't wish to adapt it.

*Spoiler*

Looking through internet it seems that the assasins appear in the game. I always liked cuasi-god alien beings and their apparittion at the end was interesting. What do they do in the game?

Feel free to share anything about Frederik Pohl's Gateway (1992) here!