New teaching strategies have been defined and studied as attempts to attract and motivate students to learn chemistry. This discipline is reported as a science that is not very interesting for high school students. For this reason, this research sought to contribute to the area of chemistry teaching, with an unprecedented digital escape room activity and a study on its impact on the intrinsic motivation and satisfaction of the psychological needs of high school students and the first years of higher education.For this, the Theory of Self-Determination was used, which states that human beings have basic psychological needs -competence, autonomy and relationship -which, when satisfied by the environment and relationships, can experience intrinsic motivation. Three quantitative instruments were used (CMQ-II, IMI and QNPQ) that were adapted, and their data statistically validated for the Brazilian and escape room contexts. Interviews were also conducted with 10 students participating in the intervention. In total, 172 responses were collected from students who participated in the digital escape room and answered the 3 questionnaires. Regarding the motivation observed by the Chemistry discipline, the studied sample presented average values for motivation in all factors. In the context of the game, the satisfaction of basic psychological needs and intrinsic motivation showed a higher average, if compared with the motivation for the discipline. This research looked for evidence that this type of activity could motivate students to learn chemistry, and the product pointed out positive aspects for this search. The results indicate that the activity described in this work has great potential to promote student engagement and motivation in chemistry classes.