•We did a systematic review on serious games and gamification for vulnerable people.•We identified different target groups, vulnerability risks and empowerment methods.•Within this area the most used technologies are either mobile or web-based.•Reward, objective and story elements are the most used game mechanics in this area.•Evaluation is mostly with focus groups or experimental setup and 11–100 participants. Serious games and gamification is a popular and growing field, commercially and for academic research. This paper aims to give an overview of a specific domain within the field of serious gaming and gamification; the field of serious games and gamification to empower vulnerable target groups. This overview contributes to a better understanding of this field, by identifying different vulnerable groups and empowerment methods with their own characteristics. From this overview a gap in the existing research can be identified: complex, more indirect, vulnerabilities are not covered in existing research. Moreover, opportunities lie in creating more standardized ways of describing games, enhancing the generalizability of the research. To introduce what distinguishes this specific sub field of serious games and gamification research from other fields, an overview which distinguishes games based on their objective. With the use of a structured literature review, this field is further studied. Next, the identified empowerment methods are studied in more detail, describing the technology, game mechanics and study results found in the literature research. The results of the found studies are often positive, but the generalizability of the results is often limited.