As rugeboy said, checkpoints would be very welcome. I got stuck on the falling # part and had to start from the beggining..
I found it very clever how the shot was an * and became "v" to show destruction, and how the enemies crumbled when dying! The visual glow was nice to differentiate ascii objects from the background.
Speaking of background, the whole PC intro was not necessary and kinda broke the rules (I doubt it was created only with ASCII characters), and the platforms also seemed not made from text. You showed talent and I'm sure you could come up with a clever way to make a platform with ascii...
Good submission, but the use of non-ascii assets hold the game back (for this jam, of course). If these parts were indeed made of text characters, please let me know!