Education has undergone many changes in teaching and learning, intensified by the significant technological developments that have responded to the fourth industrial revolution and other emergent situations. In this context, developing information and communication technologies has become vital in supporting new ways and learning models in the various educational levels to address a complicated environment where individuals must have complex and computational skills to respond to challenges. This study proposes a complex thinking framework that links citizen science and digital game-based learning to develop university students' computational thinking skills. The results indicate that (a) it is possible to consider the sub-competencies of complex thinking in the design of a digital citizen-science game to develop computational thinking, and (b) the digital game-based learning framework for citizen science topics can potentially increase students' engagement and teamwork in data collection and analysis while building their knowledge and computational thinking skills, and their complex thinking competency and sub-competencies.