The escape room game is an example of digital game-based learning that has become a popular learning tool in recent years. However, not enough is known about enthusiasm for and promising reports of the use of escape rooms in education. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of escape room game-based civics education on eighth grade students' learning motivation, critical thinking and flow experience. To explore the effects, a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest with a control group design method was employed. The participants were 76 eighth grade students. The subjects were divided into two groups: the experimental group, which used an escape room game, and the control group which used the Google classroom digital platform. The results of the study indicated that there was a significant difference between the two groups in favour of the experimental group in terms of learning motivation. There was a significant difference between the two groups' critical thinking in favour of the experimental group for the 'assumption' and 'interpretation' subscales of the critical thinking test. Regarding flow experience, the experimental group performed significantly better than the control group. Finally, based on the research results, suggestions are made for the future use of escape room games for teaching and for future research.