I'm glad you enjoyed Stardander Revenant! Definitely keep an eye on Stardander - it does have more characters and witch management, but each of the characters has a story arc, with the main story centering around Dare (the headmaster cat).
I noticed that one of the devs on Steam mentioned that they're worried constantly changing perspectives year to year would be jarring. So what if you introduce the characters that'll be playable in the future in the previous chapter(s)? That way the player would get to know the characters are like before they play them, which would make the transition smoother. Kind of like in stories that use third person limited? Is that the right term? Like here, the player experiences the story from Griselda's POV, and we get to know Dianthus through her. So it would be a lot less jarring for the player if the game switched to Dianthus's POV in a post-October storyline, versus switching to Dianthus's POV when she wasn't introduced in Griselda's storyline at all. Sorry if this all sounds really convoluted, I've been told I skip a lot of details when explaining.