There was an old falling-sands game with a website (2005ish) that had some other games in broken english. One of them was an RPG where you could hire little stick figures in different classes, equip them, and move them around with your mouse as you traveled through 2D screens. Does that ring any bells?
You may be looking for a game called Dust on dan-ball.jp
Perfect! Thank you very much. I was looking for "Stick Ranger" on that same site.
http://dan-ball.jp/javagame/ranger/