I love the creativity and sensitivity of the horror community! I'm so thrilled to discover what people have come up with to make others uneasy, to surprise and break the rules in new ways.
This scream jam is no exception, and I would love to know more on everyone's creative process :D

Personally, I think horror comes primarily from anticipation of the unknown and secondly by a sense of immediate threat (it could totally be a non existing threat). So immersion really is at the core of my design process. The levels must feel tangible, the controller must feel as real as possible, the sound design has to be rich and creative, the lighting should be well thought too!

The build up and coherence of the experience are essentials too. The more you build up towards the threat, the bigger the anticipation and the payoff is! (you don't even have to have a payoff, the anticipation can often be horror by itself)
The coherence is important because it adds immersion, the player would always feel more engaged in a world that has been designed towards a single goal.
To have a result that feels the most coherent as possible, I try to think of a simple concept, a few words, and apply it to all of the aspects of the game.

For example, for the game we've made during the jam, we used the concept of "alienating job" to think about every aspect of the game. Everyone in the team worked so well to give the best experience possible. I must say I feel really proud of what we did. If you would like to give our game a try, here it is.

Please, tell me about how YOU design horror and feel free to share your games here :)

With my entry I tried to create a horror experience by taking an environment and situation that is relatable. In my case its a bedroom and the relatable aspect is being afraid of the dark, which many of us experienced as children and some still do to an extent as adults.

I also made an effort to have the game go slowly and build tension through anticipation. The game also signals that the ghosts are there  without immediately showing themselves. You'll hear them or the indicators on screen will identify that there is activity taking place and then its up to the player whether they want to look now or later. They know they will have to look sooner or later to progress, but they have to decide if now is the right time or not.

I think these are what worked for my game anyway.

Not much thinking went into my game I just wanted to make something funny and somewhat scary.

I'm not very talented so I went with simple stuff, Also when making my game I tend to focus on the Atmosphere.

Anyway just building on a "Simple Concept" is what worked for me.