E3 2013: Hands-on with Natsume's groovy new iOS games - Gabrielle's Sweet Defense and Gabrielle's Zombie Attack

Natsume didn't disappoint on its promised plans to bring the little ghoul-loving girl Gabrielle back to life with a pair of new mobile titles.

Following her WiiWare (and later 3DS) debut with Gabrielle's Ghostly Groove, the lovable Gabrielle jumped into mobile gaming with Gabrielle's Monster Match.

Now, she's ready to try her hand at another style of puzzle game and tower defence strategy with Gabrielle's Zombie Attack and Gabrielle's Sweet Defense.

Both titles are presented with the same, cutesy goth graphics that helped make Gabrielle popular in the first place and both feel equally at home in the expanding Gabrielle's universe of games.

In this match-up puzzler, Gabrielle is tasked with defending the town of Monsterville from a wave of encroaching zombies. These undead have a weak spot, thankfully, and it's to brightly coloured, numerical radishes.

As fate would have it, Monsterville boasts an ample supply of these useful vegetables and each zombie is kind enough to wear its vulnerabilities out in the open.

The undead, so polite these days.

Anyway, as the zombies creep forward you'll have to lob a radish at them. If you match either the colour or the number, you'll zap the zombie away. If you match both the colour and the number, you'll trigger a combo which will chain down to the next zombie(s) in line.

Some zombies can only be hit by a combo, so it pays to think ahead instead of lobbing radishes blindly.

Gabrielle's second mobile outing on offer at E3 is more of a "core" game, in that it's a straight-up tower defence title.

Hungry humans have been lured to Monsterville by a pile of piping hot pastries, and it's up to Gabrielle and the citizens of Monsterville to hold them off.

Each monster (including Gabrielle) has a set path affinity that they'll follow, and the humans will march toward the bakery along different routes. When a monster meets a human, they'll tussle. When the human has been adequately thrashed, they'll disappear in a cartoony cloud of smoke.

To win each level, however, you'll need to march enough of your monsters past the human lines to shut down their base.

Both Gabrielle's Zombie Attack and Gabrielle's Sweet Defense are expected on the App Store "by the end of July, if not sooner".

There's no official word yet on the prospect of an Android release.