Ambient sound is background noise that refers to a current location or state of a scene, for example, if it were a scene involving rain then rain noises would be played in the background of the scene.
Another example is city background noise, in TV when a character is walking through the streets of a city you’ll typically hear multiple sounds like traffic, the sound of footsteps depending on how crowded it is and even construction work sometimes just to set the tone that this is a busy and cramped environment.
Ambient sound could be used in our synoptic project, even though our game is based primarily indoors we could have winds howling against windows or maybe electrical currents near a dodgy light.
Silence is often used in TV and Games, its an excellent way to build suspense, for example in a boss fight, you hear distance footsteps getting louder and louder seemingly coming toward you, then suddenly silence awaited by a huge explosion of noise as the boss emerges and lunges at you and the fight commences.
L3 Y2 Games, Media and VFX 