As urban planning processes are often complex and protracted, fostering public participation in this sector has to be seen as a major challenge. Nevertheless, previous research on that topic offers various solutions that aim to tackle that problem, either by focusing on playful formats or on gamification and serious gaming. Often examined separately, these approaches deliver promising strengths to improve public participation in the urban sphere. Hence, a synopsis of those strategies seems to be worthwhile and is therefore further investigated in this paper. In order to analyze current works on that issue systematically, the paper is structured via a literature-based classification of different stages of public participation that distinguish whether citizens are being informed, consulted or collaborated with during the planning process. By giving an insight on innovative participation tools and methods in this field, the pursued outcome of this article are impulses for designing an advanced participatory platform which is part of the research project U_CODE (Urban Collective Design Environment).