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Which Android layout and view to use for simple image-based game?

I would like to make a simple Android game where a large background image is displayed and some other images are displayed in specific locations over it, where the other images may be clickable.
Here's a quick sample image of what I'm talking about:
The user should be able to tap the soccer player or the moose (ah, the classic "soccer player moose problem"!)
How should I render this screen (which layouts and views?) so the user can interact with it and it will scale properly on different devices?

I would use a RelativeLayout.
You can set the you background image to the layout (fill_parent for height and width).
You can then put your ImageViews, containing your moose and soccer player down on the layout relative to the top or sides of the sceen, or relative to each other (making sure to specify "dp" units for everything). Set the backgrounds of your ImageViews to be transparent, and there won't be a bounding box problem (and/or you can also set your ImageViews alignment to be relative to each other, ensuring they don't overlap).
I think this is the simplest way to do this - it is then super easy to attach onClickListener to your ImageViews in your Activity, and you are done.
This type of layout will work the same on all devices and screen sizes.
There are some small gotcha's with RelativeLayouts, but they are pretty simple once you get into them, and provide fast rendering (since the view hierarchy is usually shallow). Good Luck.

ImageView for the clickable elements seems like a fine choice to me. For the background I would just set your image as the background of the parent layout i.e. RelativeLayout

SurfaceView for the whole thing (with your field as a background) and regular *ImageView*s for added elements. You can easily recover the click coordinates from the SurfaceView and thus know what element has been touched.
SurfaceView might offer you additional possibilities anyway.

For most images, I'd use an ImageView for each one, like FoamyGuy said.
If they're close enough for overlapping bounding boxes to be an issue, you can still use an ImageView for each, but with a variation of this answer, testing alpha for each ImageView in range.

I would agree with both FoamyGuy and Booger that if your only goal is to place static images onto the screen that do something when you click them, RelativeLayout and ImageViews all the way.
But...
If you are looking to randomly spawn multiple images onto the screen in intervals and have them move around for the player to interact with while explosions are going off and maidens are being kidnapped, you should look into SurfaceView, Canvas, Drawable, TouchEvents, and FrameBuffers.

how to design this UI in android app

i am trying to create the following UI in android app
In the above image all the five are to be image buttons. How to design this UI as like in the screen shot please help me friends....

Inside LinearLayout take RelativeLayout and make it centrally aligned.Then
Take first image Near me and set it's property.
Now take the second image Explore and set it to right of first image.
Place third image My network and place it below first image.
Fourth image Live set this to right of third image and and below second image.
Now center aligned your center image.

You will need to create 5 images, each of which has transparent areas. This layout type lets you position elements relative to the layout group itself, as well as to items within the group.

I'm not very familiar with Android advanced layout design, but the common layout objects give an idea:
There is a SurfaceView which gives you the ability to manipulate z-coördinates. In the SurfaceView you can then place a Grid/Relative/TableLayout for the 4 buttons (which you pre-render as rectangular images with transparency) and a simple Layout which centers and only contains the middle button.
If you then set the Z value of the first layout to less than that of the second you will get the view you want.

Specific Parts of ImageView clickable

What are some ideas about having an ImageView that takes up the whole screen and making only parts of it clickable? I was thinking that I could extend the ImageView class and override its ontouch method which would allow me to detect touches based on an x and y. The only problem I can see with this is on different resolutions the touches might not map to the correct areas. I suppose I could then detect the resolution and figure out some way to map the x and y to the correct areas. I feel like there must be an easier way though. Does anyone have any other ideas?

How about creating transparent views with your desired click listeners on top of the ImageView using a RelativeLayout. You can use the xml to place those "hotspots" where you would like them relative to your image and define the layout so the "hotspot" view scale properly along with the image when displayed on different resolutions.

If the 'hotspot' shapes are not too complex, you could dynamically split the image, setup individual clicklisteners and re-merge the drawables in a way for them to appear contiguous. I do like Gregg's method more though.

Draw images on top of each other in android

I have some images that I want to put on top of each other on random order.
If it possible using one ImageView or do I need to create multiple image views based on number of images?

You don't completely specify what you want.... if you want the images to be placed in different positions (in the X and Y axis), meaning that while watching the photo on the top you can see part of the other images, then you have to create different ImageViews, or drawing them on a canvas (I think this one is much better).
If the images are just one on top of the other (hiding the one on the bottom), you just have to use one ImageView.

LayerDrawable may fit your requirement, you may refer to this post overlay two images in android to set an imageview

Android: How do you scale multiple views together?

I'm trying to layer graphics one top of each other, like an icon over a background, with the second layer (icon) at a certain pixel offset from the top left corner of first layer (background). Since each layer will eventually have its own animation, I'm placing each in its own View.
For my implementation I have two ImageViews, one for each layer, inside a RelativeLayout, which in turn is inside a ScrollView. ImageViews are positioned using layout_margin relative to the top left corner (0,0). The first ImageView is larger than the screen (background), while the second ImageView is smaller than it (icon). ScrollView automatically resizes the first ImageView (background) since it is larger than the screen, it does not resize the second since it is smaller (icon).
I need both of them to scale together, and I also need the positioning of the second layer over the first layer to adjust itself accordingly. This actually works well in a layer-list, but due to the animations I am forced to use Views. How can I scale and position multiple Views together, or do I need to build my own class for something that seems like it should be fairly basic?
Thanks in advance.

I had a similar problem in my android application. Android has introduced new set of API's to help us on this, setScaleX() and setScaleY().
Just call layout.getParent().setScaleX(); and layout.getParent().setScaleY();